AWARENESS

Awareness

I awoke this morning
feeling absolutely certain of something–
but of what?

Being certain, however
floated my mood above
a murky, pungent pool of despair.

Skittering toward me
like a ruby-throated hummingbird circling a begonia
with fast, hopeful wings, was awareness.

In that fragile space
between fluttering and landing
anything was possible.

White Out

I do not know
which way is North
having lost
my writing way.
Does this turn work?
Does that?

The leaking sky
drops sheets
of slippery snow
that line the road
and wall me in.
The only thing

I know to do
is follow
the plodding path
the practiced snowplow
makes, and hope
it leads me home.

We Elderly
A Cinquain

One way
Or another
All of us are falling—
From ruined knees, from rocky roads,
From grace.

Thermodynamics

When we die
our precious energy
escapes on swanning
wings into the arms
of the waiting universe

where it may
move determined water
over river rocks,
twirl emerald leaves
on quaking poplar trees,
or up the wattage of a star.

Touching the Face of God

Oh! I have slipped
the surly bonds of earth
put out my hand
and touched the face of God.
(From “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee Jr).

There are gilded moments
when obstacles fall away,
and an idea, a sensation,

a line of poetry arrives
in purest form. You must
be ready to catch that gift

of molten glass, and blow
it into the shape it was
destined to be, the graceful

arm of a handcrafted
mahogany chair, a brightly
tufted hummingbird painted

on a swath of sumptuous
silk, a forkful of summer’s
first blueberriest pie,

or a line of verse so true
it wakes a part of you
that had fallen asleep

Lynne Schilling has advanced degrees in Pediatric Nursing and Child Development and Family Studies. After a long academic career she retired in 2008. An avid reader of fiction and poetry, her interest in writing poetry began while in psychoanalysis in the 1980s. She wrote for her own personal use and didn’t begin writing poetry seriously, seeking instruction and mentorship, until her mid-seventies. She has self-published two poetry chapbooks: With an Open Hand (1988) and Navigating Evening Seas: Approaching Eighty (2023). She lives in Connecticut.