June 2023
Bio Note: I resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. There've been four hundred fifty stories and poems published so far, and seven books. I work the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where I manage a posse of eight review editors, and as lead editor at The Scribes Micro Fiction magazine.
On Naps
A high up boss of mine,
who didn’t much like me.
used to say that naps
kept him smart and healthy.
Then he died of cancer.
Despite this negative result
I find that naps are necessary,
not for smarts or spunk,
those are beyond me,
just for metamorphism
from sluggish to active,
a cocoon I can creep into
and reemerge butterflyish
Visitations
My son arrived just now, his son in tow.
Our meetings are too few to keep abreast
of how our lives have shifted tone and flow
and how we had to change as we were stressed.
The love still shared was born with traits now faux
yet it abides in changeling sympathy.
Our differences are gulches set below
the bridging skeins of trust and empathy.
For there’s no judgement shown by we who know
we cannot let the facts malform the true,
its basking warmth enabling us to glow
in spite of lives that wandered off askew.
Immolation
I burn the droppings of trees
and the sawed down cadavers
from their accidental deaths,
not so much for their heat
as for the beauty of their pyre
and the aroma of their growth
given off from their death,
hoping they can be pleased
with my reverent tribute.
©2023 Ed Ahern
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