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| Elizabeth Marriott at Unsplash |
Drought’s parch is again upon the west,
the great desert uncloaks herself in dusty despair,
stunted snails hunker ‘til moist mornings return.
Spiders stealthily trap and suck essences from
crawlers stuck in English ivy’s webbed sinews,
harmless hiding little ones just ‘cause they’re there.
Tenacious ivy pours over our
backyard fence, volunteers its fidelity,
comforts our wine barrel hoop peace sign.
I bench sit watching week by week
wax green leaves crawl to obscure earth’s
need for congenial tolerance well earned.
Galvanized steel hope for disarmament
must hide its embarrassed shine this year
while bombs carpet Gaza and lately Iran.
Our fallen just a few in this war,
names get said each and every one
while cluster and bunker buster bombs for them.
Bluster and lies can’t hide the dead,
ours a few soldiers, theirs mostly like you and me,
harmless ones hiding just ‘cause they’re there.
Corey Weinstein’s poetry has been published in Haight Asbury Literary Journal, Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Our California 2024, The Ekphrastic Review, Forum (City College of San Francisco), California State Poetry Society, Visitant, Abandoned Mine, Speak Poetry of San Mateo County, California State Poetry Society and Jewish Currents, and he wrote and performed a singspiel called Erased: Babi Yar, the SS and Me. In his free time, he hosts San Francisco OLLI’s Poetry Workshop Circle and plays the clarinet in his local jazz band, Tandem, his synagogue choir and woodwind ensembles.