A Moment’s Silence
About this time my neighbors wipe their mouths,
fold napkins, slide from their seats and leave the table.
Some carry dishes to the kitchen. Some move to easy chairs
before the picture window or turn to screens
to hear the news, how children scream and run and hide
as bullets fly towards their friends at school, and how
in Syria some children have no school.
Neighbors feel guilty, lower eyes from probing looks
of husbands, wives, and turn that channel off or shrug
outside to smooth the fresh-mulched garden bed, put away
their power tools, admire the generous green of lawns.
They don’t see the yearling doe standing near
the rhododendron bush, feet poised as if she stopped mid-step,
or see the rabbit, immobile, in the middle of the road.
LINDA CONROY, a retired social worker in Bellingham, Washington State, finds that poetry serves to honor the complexity and simplicity of human nature, where we discover the unexpected in ourselves and others. Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Penwood Review, Raven Chronicles, Shotglass, Persimmon Tree, Treehouse, The Poeming Pigeon, Psaltery and Lyre, and in local anthologies.
Twyckenham Notes 