November 2024
Bio Note: I am a long-time editor and the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). I live in a house surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees, preferred nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of my writing attic as a runway.
New Hampshire
trying to fall asleep in a bed
narrower than my own
I attempt a meditation
I learned years ago
nothing to do
nowhere to go
nothing to hold onto
but I am holding on
to the passenger’s view
of the road we drove today
a life-sized bear
chainsaw-carved
a screened-in porch
turned nail salon
an axe-throwing shed
a state-run liquor barn
and in the weeds between
two corrugated buildings
a quadrangle of sun
where a doe looked up
from nursing her fawn
Sonnet for a Neighbor Whose Name I Don't Know
We only ever wave or say hello. I don’t know
anything about her life before, not even where
she’s from, this grandmother who moved in
last year when the neighbors’ baby was born.
But I can see she is sturdy. She bundles the child
into a stroller for a daily walk around the block.
Only once have I seen her turn back, when the sky
went black and a spatter swept through. Mostly
she’s out pulling weeds, tending a garden she made
in a corner of the yard. No radio. No phone.
No playpen. No toys. Just a breeze waving the trees.
Just the boy sitting in the grass. Just her, singing
and growing things. Me at my mailbox, my hurts
hurting less, my hurts like earth being turned.
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 important to community building at Verse Virtual. -JL