August 2024
Linda Goin
lindagoin@gmail.com
Bio Note: I am a neurodiverse poet and writer published in numerous online venues and several in print. I also won the 1995 Colorado Press Association Shining Star Award for 13 categorized first-place awards. While I enjoy all forms of writing, poetry allows me to connect with readers, sharing moments of beauty, struggle, and triumph. My passion for storytelling is reflected in two chapbooks, one of which is a creative pop-up version.

Perspective

You're dead, and that makes you
spectacular, spirited, anything
but ordinary. You don't feel pain
in your bones as I do, the ache
accompanied by aging, fear
that comes with living beyond
your means, the triviality
that comes with eating alone.
Oh, but it's alright. Truly.
You're pure, and that aspect
never arrives when one is alive.
You're perfect, and I remain in love.

A Season of Everyday Things

Scientists sit, legs crossed,
buttocks flattened on folding chairs
as they smoke cigars, sip aged whiskey,
murmur about a season’s everyday things.
Things that kill us or save us or how
they’re the same. Talk about black holes,
light years, lost time, and clear-as-mud
mysteries only math explains. They scribe
how ice, wind, and rain changed since
smokestacks and steam engines.
They decipher bird beaks, fins,
and shells discovered on isolated islands
or embedded in rocks, fossil shadows
of their former everyday selves.
They expound on dinosaur bones,
space stones, why early bipeds added
flowers to graves. They ponder why
extravagant drinking ended lives 29 years
sooner, on average, than expected between
2011 to 2015, because they like to hear
the mass sound of their voices slurring lines
around the breeze of everyday things.

©2024 Linda Goin
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