THIS. MORNING.

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

“Morning Has Broken” (Oil and Acrylic on Canvas) by Brad Gray, 2017

If the American voter couldn’t

If she or he couldn’t

Because she or he

 

What America is

What America has always been

What America will always be

 

The imperfect striving to become—

That was me once the choice the candidate

 

The beautiful young people mine and yours

The children and the grandchildren born and yet

For them

The arc of the moral universe bending toward—

 

I am old flat-out boomed bombed out

What I have done what I have left one

City one house the beds made-up like tombs

 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds would like to acknowledge her mentors, Nadia Colburn of Align your Story, Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street Press, and Tom Daly's writing workshops in the greater Boston area. Some of Joanne's recent work can be found at The Umbrella Arts 2020 Art Ramble. 

WHEN WE'LL ALL MARCH TOGETHER

by George Salamon

Detail of the cover of Katie Mack's book The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking).

Does it all end, or can we keep on in our merry way indefinitely?… We have doom and destruction of our own to worry about, arriving faster and faster… Plague is rampant. The Arctic Circle is on fire. Still, I find it helpful—not reassuring certainly, but mind-expanding—to be reminded of our place in a vast cosmos. —James Gleick in his review of Katie Mack's book The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) in The New York Times, August 4, 2020

Walked out of my confinement to
Gaze at the sun, moon and stars,
Colossi of our universe, they
Make our world go round,
Turning the wheels, rising
Above our shrinking horizon.
We touch their grandeur to
Sustain our hope and striving.
Shivering, I crash instead into
Our rush into losing everything
There is to lose: day, night, the
Center itself, I ask if our purpose
In the universe is found in such
Disposition, or lost by it as well.


George Salamon lives in St. Louis, MO and most recently has contributed to One Sentence Poems, The Asses of Parnassus, and TheNewVerse.News.