May 2021
Robert K. Johnson
choirofday@cs.com
Bio Note: My poems are spins on our everyday world, which has always gripped me much more than science-fiction worlds. A now retired English Professor, I taught for many years at Suffolk University in Boston. I also for several years was Poetry Editor for IBBETSON STREET magazine. I have had several collections of poems published.

Like a Pounding On the Front Door

You need help to make the coffee
you made on your own for years—
you're not able to dress yourself—
you forget as soon as you leave 
the house 
where it is you live—

while I more and more—oh yes!—
interrupt your day
to lavish my love on you
before dementia's dark hood
encloses your brain completely.

An Evening Etude

Sometimes
even loss 
brings beauty:

a heron's 
westward
flapping wings

enfolded
by the enormous
darkening sky.

The Magic

Grown-ups don't understand—
the posed pictures
of stars and superstars
in their bright uniforms
offer me a chance to be
with them in the ball field—
joke with all the players
in the dugout—play second base
right next to the shortstop
I idolize—smack
a home run out of the park.
©2021 Robert K. Johnson
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