June 2023
Bio Note: June is Lexington Poetry Month and every year I, along with a community of poets with ties to Lexington, Kentucky, submit up to one poem a day to a blog. I've selected poems from last year's LexPoMo blog for my June submission to Verse-Virtual. Most of my poetry in June is written on my front porch from which I see hills, birds, livestock and other things that inspire me.
Tightrope Life
I walk a tightrope life
my balancing pole see-sawing
under weight of microplastics, wild
fires, melting icecaps. I try
to counterbalance by thumbing
the scale with little things—
carrying change for egg
customers, ordering library
books for pickup next week
at storytime, shooing turkeys
from corn patch. I’m told
I make the trivial weightier
than need be, but if I didn’t
how quickly I’d tip and fall.
Pining
O, table-top heliotrope!
Plucked and vased
you pine—like Clytie
for her Helios—drooping
fading, foundering, withering
giving up like we do.
When love's gaze decays
we, too, shrivel, quiver, gasp
sputter, collapse, unravel.
©2023 Nancy Jentsch
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