Dress Like a Queen

 

Kindness can be worn like a robe—soft, rich and royal.

Ask me how I know and I’ll

Tell you this—

Humility is

Less don’t see me, but more I see you.

Even on my worst day,

Even when

No one else seems to.

 

Just because I smile, don’t mistake—I

Ache, too.  But warm and soft, it costs

Nothing to be kind,

Especially when it’s your worst day, too.

 

© 2026 Jennifer Wagner

 

Lesson learned from my grandma (Kathleen Jane).  March 20, the first day of spring, would have been her birthday.  So fitting for who she was as a person.  Also, I kept her robe.  It still smells like her.

 

dVerse:acrostic names

 

image above created by me using copilot

 

fear not, for we’re just poems—

 

 

rubbed together in a pocket,

rattling

 

smallish and fierce,

davidic—

 

or, too, like pieces of cloud

puffy-white against a blanket of oh-so-baby-tear-drop blue

 

or, a drip-draping of grayish snow,

just a tad cranky, only a touch ominous

 

or rising

like the sun, or a siren, yea high and heralding—

 

costa’s hummers and pink fairy dusters

and other such underestimated beautiful mayhem

 

 

© 2026 jennifer wagner

 

dVerse poetics: turn of phrase

 

photo © jennifer wagner

Van Ghosted

 

They say there’s much you can do with

stale bread.

 

Panzanella, bruschetta, crostini.

Croutons, bread pudding.

 

How like spring,

new and fresh, it goes quickly,

 

and then, the blistering oven

of summer is here.

 

But, how do you salvage a poem, like sunrise,

so fleeting you can never seem to catch it in time?

 

Like manna.

Here and gone.

 

I saw it today, etched into the glass of a window

with an epitaph:

 

Your wings were ready, but my heart was not.

I see how it is. 

 

I glimpsed you briefly, soft-robed phantom,

boarding a train to somewhere else,

 

orphaned, like my last vanished poem,

not a breadcrumb in sight,

 

on into the starry night.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

Word Garden Word List

dVerse OLN

 

"Your wings were ready, but my heart was not." - Amelia Hutchins

 

When you just don’t jot it down in time.  Know the feeling?  Maybe it will return, when it, and I, am ready. ;)