Essential Work What work is mine? Offering my full cornucopia, cut from leg of sacrificial lamb? Allowing my rounded fruit to be cupped squeezed, peeled bruising concealed? Resurrecting the ole iron lung, its dependable clatter, the work of being essential noise for those needing reminders of the sweetness of breathing on our own without effort.
From Pyre to Ash: A Teacher’s Duty I’m sorry but I can’t write a poem about going back to school. My pandemic mind is a closet with twenty years of chaos. Unkempt as it is, everything will fall. My job is to hoard piles of artifacts – the art of facts: the tests, markers and
Perceived through hazel eyes. Felt with every beat of your bleeding heart. Lessons taught with every bloom to closing chapter, turning petals in between. Checkpoints of soul’s journey. Insight mirroring truths for evolving essence. A flock of birds feathered with love, change, growth, gratitude. A travel holding you hostage, no direction or destination until you
shattered no one looks at her as she walks to school uniformed, books clutched to her chest passing cars, pedestrians see past her through her she is unremarkable she is scenery. each step to her destination an effort not to turn and run sheer force of will her only glue to hold together her plain