Hailey McGovern's Poetry Flyer
Ocean Blue
Ocean Blue
So cool and sound
You’ll sink straight down
Or float to the top
It’s a safe valley for your dreams
In every dropDeath will rise
We all love someone or thing that's alive.
A person,
A pet,
Maybe even a plant.
But with all life,
Comes death.
It may come within decades.
Or maybe only a few years.
But death is inevitable.
You can’t avoid it.
You can’t hide it.
You can only accept it.
Thinking back on those I’ve lost
And those we have lost,
I can only hope they are not suffering.
I’ve accepted they are gone,
Never to come back.
And I know you can too.
Accepting doesn't mean forgetting.
It simply means,
You welcome it with open arms.
Just like death has welcomed our loved ones.A Sunset
By Ari Banias
I watch a woman take a photo
of a flowering tree with her phone.
A future where no one will look at it,
perpetual trembling which wasn’t
and isn’t. I have taken photos of a sunset.
In person, “wow” “beautiful”
but the picture can only be
as interesting as a word repeated until emptied.
I think I believe this.
Sunset the word holds more than a photo could.
Since it announces the sun then puts it away.
We went to the poppy preserve
where the poppies were few but generous clumps
of them grew right outside the fence
like a slightly cruel lesson.
I watched your face, just out of reach.
The flowers are diminished by the lens.
The woman tries and tries to make it right
bending her knees, tilting back.
I take a photo of a sunset, with flash.
I who think I have something
to learn from anything learned nothing from the streetlight
that shines obnoxiously into my bedroom.
This is my photo of a tree in bloom.
A thought unfolding
across somebody’s face.