Poetry

...when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. - Robert Frost
Carolyn Martin | Editor

Presence

‘What the Pond Teaches’, ‘Crow in a Persimmon Tree’, ‘One Morning’

By Pradeep R. Varadwaj and Jerome Gagnon

These poems offer a contemplative passage through stillness, grief, and renewal. From the pond’s quiet teachings to the crow’s unexpected joy and the monarch’s morning-lit flutter, they gesture toward the subtle ways the living world invites us back into relationship, presence, and the possibility of ripening.

Poem

Other People’s Children

By Colin Greer

A poem by Colin Greer, President of the New World Foundation. He has published several social science books as well as numerous books of poetry. He was a founding editor of Social Policy Magazine and Change Magazine, and wrote a column for Parade Magazine for almost 20 years. He wrote this poem in response to the myriad, often silenced, crisis affecting children in the US and around the world.

If My Soul Is Stone

By Wendy Jean MacLean

If my soul is stone / then all this anxiety / is glacial till / moving across my body. / Rough edges are dulled by the constant rubbing / of worry, working away, / chipping and fracking ...

Eleanor on 72nd Street

By Colin Greer

We were playing chess On a dry stone table. She behind us, tall white elegant A souvenir of heart on 72nd street.