Catch and Release

Carillon Point

Photo © 2019 Jennifer Wagner

It wasn’t the briny olives,

the creamy fromage.

It wasn’t the tender duck confit.

It wasn’t even the cascade

of twilight on harbored boats

on which we imagined

ourselves adventuring.

It was you, in your fisherman sweater,

blue-green eyes sparkling,

hooking deep to give me back

my heart and bones,

returning all my loss, tossed

in the fracturing, titanic wind,

holding me to my dreams

and why I’d dreamt them.

© 2019 Jennifer Wagner

An Invitation

Photo © 2017 Ian Wagner

Poems

are not safe.

They’re risky.

If you take one for a walk

you might start to think differently

about life, or death, or something,

and you might not like thinking

differently.

What does this mean, you say,

as if I need

another question

I can’t answer . . .

and so avoid the poem

and the heart of it.

True poems

have one

no matter what they tell you—

a poem is a creature

ready to pounce

or lay at your feet

licking your toes—like life

—hungry,

waiting,

and not so bad after all.

© 2017 Jennifer Wagner

For dVerse OpenLinkNight…and an invitation to check out the new dVerse Anthology, Chiaroscuro, available on Amazon (I have a poem in there, too).