After a Doctor Appointment

 

 

Nestled inside

the fifth largest city in the USA,

between little bookshops and mom-and-pops,

where people came to recover from

TB and asthma all those years ago,

they knew something then.

 

Some say

the signs are everywhere.

Well, there was at least this one.  Planted like a

flag under a slope of sunny sky.

 

I circled back.  Another look

with a tear in my eye.  Your healing blurry

but nearer.

 

Why worry?  It said.  Dead end.

 

Somehow it seems contradictory,

as if we should, anyway.

As if worrying is doing something.

 

But, like the sign says, it is.  Taking the

worry road

just brings us one step closer to dead.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

What’s Going On?  Contradictions

 

Photo: street sign in the Sunnyslope area of Phoenix, AZ © 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

Fully Hope End Up

 

When pain escapes,

it’s a relief.

 

Like when my mom

describes my grandma’s passing,

 

her body gripped by pain

for so many years,

 

bent in the shape

of the chair

 

where she spent

most of her last days.

 

The whoosh—

a gone pain

 

released from a mortal body.

 

I felt something like it this morning.

That One Certain Memory

 

blinking like a cursor

when I woke.

 

Do you have one, too?

That memory

 

always accompanied

by the pain that bent you, still bends you?

 

It was gone.

 

And my heart stretched out like a palm

on Sunday,

 

hope-end up

to You.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

Poem-a-Day 13:  write a “Full (blank)” poem, make it your title

NaPoWriMo 13

 

Photo:  inside The Mission in the Sun © 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

a poem for palm Sunday