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. ;)

 

Riversong

Photo © 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

From the watchtower

I saw them, wildflowers

drifting downstream.

 

I followed on foot, from loamy bank

to bank, and found you

in that neglected canoe

 

—you’d chased them, too,

with my heart,

a padlock you’d rescued

 

for pennies on the dollar,

and handed it back to me,

warm, and melting like wax.

 

I’d never been able

to find the key,

but you unlocked it

 

with a poem in Latin,

so haunted, so beautiful,

and unchained all my wildflower tears.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

Shay's Word Garden Word List 

dVerse OLN