December 2021
Bio Note: A longtime editor, slowly publishing poet, and author of six picture books, including From Apple Trees to Cider, Please! (Albert Whitman), I am a 2021 Pushcart and Best Microfiction nominee. In 2018 I moved away from the masthead of an academic quarterly to work with people who want to share their stories, ideas, and poems in print. It’s been a joy—and quite an adventure. Although I decided in August to take a sabbatical, here I am, back at writing and editing.
Renaissance
Standing in the two-cup coffee chill
of late November, I’m losing friends and family
like another leaf about to drop.
The world’s become the colors of a fire,
oranges and ambers, blazing reds
burning while the hardening ground’s gone brown.
Withered leaves, raked to line worn curbs,
await their rumbling funeral procession
as the calendar wanes yet swells, potent with Advent.
Life and death. Dying. Death and life.
Inside, the house is just as strangely festive—
this countdown to nativity and the dropping
of a glittering herald of another human
year of falling down that leads to ashes
then fragrant green unwarranted redemption.
Pumpkins shrivel on the porch as our pink-cheeked
neighbors’ children board the yellow bus.
Another Monday to be overthrown—
another chance, miraculous and blighted,
to try anew to learn to do things right.
©2021 Felicia Sanzari Chernesky
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL