Mary Anne Abdo
Window View
Change and possibility,
are the sisters to growth.
A Celtic verse to ponder.
Modern society is so intertwined,
with the drudgery of automated work.
Like robots with no internal compass,
no room to breath,
natures’ fresh air,
to expand your lungs,
and our minds.
We can choose our work,
to be creative and nurturing.
Be it a field on a farm.
Be it a cubical in an office.
It is how we change our perspective,
through the windows we open.
It is the many different views,
we find meaning.
Just like the windows of our souls,
we crave the possibilities of each new day.
By changing the lenses inward,
towards our imagination,
and by greeting each day,
with the untamed potential within ourselves.
Virginia LeBaron
Stepmother
You should have stood up
my stepson says
at his 8 th grade graduation
because I didn’t, uncertain
when the Principal called out
for parents and legal guardians
to stand, be recognized. So specific
and not me.
You should have stood up
he says matter-of-factly
after the ceremony. He noticed
in that dim and crowded
auditorium. Looked for his family
and decided it was me.
Tess Lockhart
Long Distance Dating
A dark chasm lies between us.
The meandering type on a page
forms into fluid syllables,
enabling us to reach across
the black abyss
to connect, recognize
deep calling unto deep,
and hold one another close
against the snakey darkness.
Without words, we are flooded
by the loneliness of silence
moving swiftly up our shores
to inundate all with the despair of chaos
that has existed since before Word
choreographed creation’s dance.
Only a word holds nothingness at bay
as a dam compels the flow of order
which solitude would sweep away.
Give me, then, such words
as will quench my thirst for you.
Let me swim in your language,
languid in the liquid languor of love.
Allow me to dive deep into the experiences
out of which they are wrought
until I am caught in the woven sedge
of memory’s narrative vows
about how to navigate your world.
As semantic selkie,
I will slip between mythic mystery
of these fluid words
to merge with you in thought
until such time as solitude calls
us to our respective shores
from which we longingly listen
for the babble of living water
rippling to reach once more.
the poet's billow 