August 2020
Sterling Warner
jsterlingwarner@gmail.com
Bio Note: An author, poet, educator, my poems have appeared in many international literary magazines, journals and anthologies, including The Flatbush Review and The Scarlet Leaf Review, and Visual Verse: An Anthology of Art & Words. My most recent poetry collections are Edges and Rags & Feathers. A Washington based author, I enjoy writing, turning wood, and when the coronavirus lock-down subsides, I’ll start fishing along the Hood Canal.

Drifting Memoranda

messages
tossed out to sea in bottles,
swallowed
down a salt water throat,
temporarily
find refuge in the ocean’s gut,
return
encrusted with barnacles,
battered,
bruised, pitted by sand & surf;
years
deliver SOS requests 
seconds
in the making and
eternal
declarations professing love 
intended
as timeless capsules

Wondering

Dedicated to all Covid-19 First Responders 

Should 
we 
remain
at safe homes 
free from contagion  
or venture beyond, face cautious
people mingling among throngs of unmasked resentment?
Limiting human exposure
presents stir crazy
challenges,
problems,
or
glitch.

Could  
free       
falling  
frequently                    
offer one unique           
opportunities on the edge:   
flying box paper kites during sudden winter squalls,  
exchanging flirtatious body      
language, doodling   
on frosted        
windows         
near                 
dawn?             

When               
might               
sovereign         
innocence        
assert peculiar  
thoughts that frighten the status quo? 
how will restless hearts glow into perpetuity 
amongst loathing’s angry maelstrom,              
balancing hunger’s                                           
compromise,    
dangling          
hope’s              
thread?
©2020 Sterling Warner
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL