by Margaret Rozga
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AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News. |
What is left?
The word could mean
an abandonment,
or a departure from,
as left a warm bed
as when your love departs for a new love
But, no.
I refuse to leave us in this land of negativity.
because that’s not all that’s left.
There’s left as a direction
as in turn left at the corner…
There’s left as remainder, what is still there
as in a winter coat left
on the back of a dining room chair,
or as in leftovers,
as in sometimes chicken soup that’s leftover
tastes better the 2nd day
That brings us to where we want to go—
the positive
Left as positive—
We have ideas left.
We have time left.
We have energy left.
We have truth and respect for truth left.
We have values left.
We have a left left.
We are that left and
we are left growing here, growing stronger.
Margaret Rozga, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee at Waukesha Professor of English Emerita, served as the 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate and the 2021 inaugural artist/scholar in residence at the UW Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station. She has published six books, most recently Restoring Prairie (2024) and Holding My Selves Together: New & Selected Poems (2021).
