I miss shaking a newspaper,
folding it closed, washing
black ink from my fingers,
feeling accomplished before
moving on with my day.
Instead, I hopscotch a crazy-quilt —
CNN. BBC. MSNBC. Fox. Round
and round, site to site and back,
never washing the stain
of sad news from my heart. Continue reading
All the flowers, poems
cards, and teddy bears
left on sidewalks
after someone died
somehow
don’t fill
the painful void
where a person
we loved
once lived.
Only progress
toward justice
can ease the pain.
A little.
Copyright 2020 Brenda Davis Harsham Continue reading
June came late,
after May rains slanted,
and gardens were planted. Continue reading
A world
afire with color
and rage
against those
who don’t see
color
as beautiful
as precious
as connected
to all of us.
Copyright 2020 Brenda Davis Harsham Continue reading
a few bobs of a daffodil’s head —
my spirits rise with
a spring in each step
Copyright 2020 Brenda Davis Harsham Continue reading
Hidden in the shadows,
afraid to move outside our comfort zones,
it’s easy to forget we can fly.
Copyright 2020 Brenda Davis Harsham Continue reading
Each day I’m drawn in
turtle-tight.
I mourn the old way
I shopped, the old way
I chatted with co-workers,
gossiped as Yelena cut my hair,
or watched my children walk,
with heavy schoolbooks. Continue reading
Daffodils break through old leaves
beside the greening grass,
and warming sunshine draws
tiny caterpillars from their eggs. Continue reading
By Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Notes: As our confinement lengthens, and the virus victim numbers climb, we are in a world scarier than fiction. But no matter how off-kilter the world may seem, humans have weathered worse in the past. We all descend from those who survived the 1918 flu, the great depression, world wars, famines, and recessions. We will make it through this, too.
Even grounded
by a virus,
I’m on a journey, Continue reading
Alone,
but not lonely,
drinking in the fragrance
of uninterrupted thought, Continue reading
A little love for
all of us pausing, Continue reading
Friendly Fairy Tales 