September 2022
Bio Note: This continues to be a good year for my poetic endeavors. The most recent delights are poems published in Everywhere I'm At the new Chicago anthology) Bennington Review and the Paterson Literary Review. I'm continuing to enjoy meeting interesting poets featured on my podcast series at www.poetryspokenhere.com
Love the Life You Live
(remembering Tootles)
You can walk the line
from here to there
keep to the straight and narrow
or be like Tootles
the free spirit train engine.
Get off the tracks
and smell the flowers,
make a daisy necklace,
enjoy yourself and
never become
the lead engine
on the big cross country run.
But beware, if you take that leap,
you must be determined.
Tootles was lured back
to the straight and narrow
with the promise of rewards
only the man can bestow.
Don’t be that Tootles,
betrayer of childhood dreams
and dreaming. Stay free.
Live the life you love
and love the life you live
as the old blues man once sang.
Reduce the risk of death by success
and make yourself more beautiful.
Everyone looks better in a daisy necklace.
Morning Shadows
Above the shaman pictograph from a cave in Utah
the morning sun casts a shadow of the peace symbol
wreath that hangs in the front window.
Tree leaves trembling in the breeze overshadow
the entire wall transforming it into a single image
that matches the way I feel this fine summer morning.
©2022 Charlie Rossiter
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