March 2020
Bio Note: I’m a New Englander and mother, who whose poetry is influenced by my river valley, mountain-surrounded landscape,
in each season. Also influenced by having survived the AIDS virus at a relatively young age, in a time before there was viable treatment, and
ignorance fed fear and stigma. My work is now found in several anthologies, many online journals, and the two chapbooks, Survival: Trees, Tides, Song
(Finishing Line Press 2019), and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020).
I join a local group of poets, who’s company I treasure, twice a month.
Portrait In My Locket
I picture him waking for the day,
this retired doctor, father of three,
whose long career was spent caring
for troubled and needy people.
His bed is an island in a room full of boxes.
Stashes of papers, magazines, clothes, books
surround him.
He rises gingerly, and readies for his day
with a wife who tells, on repeat, the same three
stories of her youth, not remembering
she has told them before.
Their little dog, the last remaining of three,
licks him with kisses.
©2020 Marjorie Moorhead
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL