December 2020
Bio Note: I am the East Region VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, and I represent them
on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. In 2018 I received the Lorine Neidecker Prize for Poetry from
the Council for Wisconsin Writers. You can find more of my work on the New Verse News website and at
www.wfop.org, or on my web site.
Gawker 2020
In this season of no stadium traffic
there are still accidents. For instance, your team accidentally
backing into the playoffs like a cement truck without a reverse beeper.
In this season where over half the teams made the playoffs,
six more than last year, your team was the last, the sixteenth one in.
And that only because fourteen other teams actually played worse than yours.
The last one. Like the playground dweeb who gets to play
only because you need to put somebody in right field,
they limped in. Their performance was not blimp-worthy.
In this wreck of a season, your team has to play on the west coast,
where the games start two hours later than local time. You don’t want
to stay up late, but hey, it’s an accident. You just can’t help but gawk.
Bike Ride During Which I Get a Glimpse
of My Possible Future
Cycling out, I meet
a tandem recumbent
and it being a curiosity,
I pay more attention
to the machine
than to the riders.
On the return trip
we meet again.
This time I notice
that the grown man
in the rear seat
isn’t pedaling at all.
He’s urging on
the man in front
using shoestrings
tied to the back of the seat
as if they were buggy reins.
He’s gone,
but no one knows
how far.
©2020 Ed Werstein
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