Rose Baldwin
Palm Springs Branch, California

The book was on a list
of poetry to read
of course I bought a copy
of such a famous screed

I gave it to my sister
she gave it to a friend
who gave it to her mother
who gave it back again

I gave it to the library
to lend and lend and lend
they sold in a bargain bag
I had it back again

I gave it to Goodwill
a bargain hunter there
scooped it off the shelf
then put it out to share

Susie picked it up from there
and she gave it to Lee
who gave it to his brother
who gave it back to me

Finally, I read it
the words were like a balm
stroking all my soft spots
rhythmic like a song

So touched was I, I said,
I have a real fine gift here
I wrapped it in nice paper
and gave it to my sister

Mimi Paris
Boca Raton

The Emergency Room
numbers on the screen
keep on going down.
I head for the nurse.
She’s talking, laughing.

I tell her, “Look!”
Her face shows fear.
My heart beats fast
and I run back.

Stuff rolls in,
Lots of staff.
Room is packed.

Shouts heard:
“Try again!”

“Gone.”

Lorraine Walker Williams
Southwest Florida Branch

To place, slip seeds into moist soil,
shutter from light, incubate and wait.
To plant is the first lesson in patience.

Plant, as a particular phylum and
species, ornamental, cleansing air,
bringing outdoors in. For Feng Shui,
a plant is a lesson in placement.

Plant, as in yourself on the couch,
a park bench, or a bumpy bus.
An attempt to be rooted in time and
space, a lesson in belonging.

Plant, an implant, something foreign,
a replacement or enhancement,
as in tooth or breast. This teaches
impermanence.

Plant includes the word plan—
Making and revising,
following or ignoring a plan,
a lesson in flexibility.

Plant words flowing and growing
from the hand of a poet,
the lesson of jasmine and plums.

Susan Bassler Pickford
Member-at-large, Portland, Maine

Turn: Middle English; partly from Old English tyrnan and turnian to turn, from Medieval Latin tornare, from Latin, to turn on a lathe, from tornus lathe, from Greek tornos; partly from Anglo-French turner, tourner to turn 1100s

Fetus turned baby
In time
Baby turned child
In time
Child turned adolescent
In time
Teen turned nun
In time
Nun turned teacher
In time
Teacher turned wife
In time
Wife turned mother
In time
Mother turned grandmother
In time
Wife turned widow
In time
Grandmother turned poetic
In time

Karen L. Kirshner
Long Island Branch, New York

We pay for the choices we made in youth,
actions stemming from a presumption of immortality,
which, once played become crimes that haunt us
when future merges with present.

Strategic windows open to newly gained control
are skillfully shut by the aggressive current of age
as it slips its claws around youthful fantasies.
Age likened to the many branches of a deceptive rose bush
Winding themselves around a long stake
Seeming to look for guidance,
Upon closer inspection…
the thorns tear through the loving caretaker, as readily
as through a hostile interloper.

Age has not befriended me,
Like a blind and hostile rose bush, I may have planted,
Pausing to admire its superficial beauty,
It turned on me and swiped this grown child’s last hopes,
Tearing them from the tapestry of optimism,
Like threads from the clothing of an intruder.

While I sit pondering my sad and singular existence,
Debt and hard labor through books takes a shadowy form,
An enigmatic monster bigger than a bad dream, taps me on the shoulder, asking me to turn towards the spectacle.
In horror, I turn to distant symbols I thought were within reach
Move further away, beyond my grasp,
Gradually facing, and sinking, tens of thousands of dollars,
A Mercedes-Benz country house, life partner, and 2.5 children,
All of it previously etched on a promised stake
Labeled “The American Dream” is lodged somewhere at the bottom
Of a mythical abyss, linking this world to another,
A Bermuda Triangle of childhood treasures lost
in the adventure of growing up.

I paid dearly to follow the dream.
Now I trespass on the edge of the abyss,
Tearfully grasping the nearest means of support,
The branches of a rose bush,
All thorns tearing into my palms
Wounded and bleeding, relentlessly
I search for the missing symbols.

“Kinetic,” (aka “Chaos”), by Karen L. Kirshner, 2017