By: J.K. Durick

Picture This

I picture the wine
In your hand
A glass enough
As poems go by
Bi-lingual of course
The neighbor’s dog
Keeping watch
Without asking
The afternoon ends
And like everywhere
Night introduces itself
The heat slows
The day goes
This is the dream
You had/have
Planned, played
A song you wrote
Words
Without the voice
Or the tune of it
But it’s here
With you
The way it should
Always be.

Brevity Works

He rarely wrote
long poems
Just grabbed a line
As it drifted by
A bit of breath
A breeze
Held for us
We can breathe
Back to life
Drew pictures
With words
Holds our attention
For a moment
Or two
Then
Disappears
Back on the shelf
To wait it out
Till called upon
Again
A page at a time
Rarely a long poem
Brevity is enough
For us.

In His Picture

He adjusted the focus
And angle
Adjusted everything
That adjusts.
Then be began getting
It all in.
This was to be
A picture of his small
World, the world of
His every day, the everyday
Of his every day
The flora and fauna
The way the breeze makes
The trees seem as if
They were waving hello
Or goodbye
The mornings, afternoons
Evenings and nights.
He gathered them
All together
Told them to smile
To stop jiggling and swaying
To say cheese.
Then he clicked it
And there it was
And there he was
Forever.
Just the way he wanted it
To be.

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J.K. Durick is a retired teacher, taught for years at Trinity College of Vermont and after that for many years at the Community College of Vermont. He and a friend started following the pandemic by writing a poem for every day – we now have run out of pandemic and have written 1580 and plan to continue till we run out.