November 2022
Bio Note: I am a second-career poet, having spent my adult life till 2020 teaching German and Spanish at Northern Kentucky University. In a way, I am still walking through life looking for just the right words, enjoying the thrill of the hunt and the mystery of the power of language. I've never been nominated for a Pushcart but derive great joy knowing that my first chapbook is being used in the creative writing classes at the Hoboken (NJ) Shelter. My poems are published in various on-line and print journals and my first poetry collection Between the Rows, (Shanti Arts) will be released in October 2022.
Bookends
Violets and asters bookend
seasons like dawn and dusk
the day. One brings you
to your knees, the other
raises your hands in prayer.
One spawns color
in spring-green lawns,
the other poses in constellations
against walls of shadowed
stone. Both bathe in equinox
sun—weak-kneed by seasons’
breezes—and nap in dim
briskness, cheered by first
and final birdsong.
Seasonsong
Spring’s song is turquoise
a perfect atoll’s lagoon—
its notes hang like sun-loved
droplets from fresh-spun webs
tinkling fearless in the face
of night’s random frosts.
Summer’s song is the color
of straw—its notes rustle
through stubble of harvested
fields, season days’ breezes
with dance-lusty jigs
from sweet clover’s songbook.
Autumn’s song is a cardinal’s
scarlet exuberance—its notes
tremble like oak’s leaves
windblown to a muted
adagio—a loved one’s last
lost lullaby.
Winter’s song is a matte-
finished blank page, marked
sparsely with wandering
tracks—its notes snowfall
a graveyard dirge burying
every rational hope for green.
©2022 Nancy K. Jentsch
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