by Laura L. Close

And mid-life, we all have a kind of crisis that
Is a knowledge—faint and somehow avoidable—
That we must see about what others deserve.
That somehow people aren’t automatically
Getting their fair share. And that email from
Your true love, which certainly would have kept
Life together for your self-preservation and others,
Was lost in space. Perhaps never sent at all.
Surely short-circuited halfway through transmission.
Or postmarked to God or Santa in some false
Hope that we would receive it miraculously,
That elves or angels would pick it up divining
Its origin and the place it was meant to be sent.
And we then postpone our lives like roses waiting
In the market to be put on someone’s dinner table
To greet a starving husband or wife and candlelight,
But the flowers sit in the store aisle under florescent bulbs.
Meanwhile, here we are, praying for salvation and a passion,
Checking our inboxes with blind compulsion, except on days
When lightning strikes, or a tree falls on the power line.

Laura L. Close is a graduate of the MFA program at George Mason University for which she has written the manuscript The Sound and Sense of Leaves (2010.) She is the author of TParty (2012), self-published by iUniverse. Her poems have also appeared in Raga Zine and Jerry Jazz Musician.