Both Sides Now
By JoAnn Moore
Inspiration piece

The season has shifted again.
The afternoon sun sets quickly:
nature prepares for its darkness.

It was about this time last year
when you started calling—
and eleven days before you left me
a message and I called back,
hopeful for what once was.

I remember the first time
I held each of my children,
discovered the softness of my mother’s skin
three weeks before she died,
heard my son say, when reading one of my poems,
…………..You got this one right,
saw the magnificence of the Pacific,
felt life leave my dog,
hoped that one day I would be closer to myself,
that I believed in you,
and realized all memory is selective.

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the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything
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Karma – acrylic on canvas 24″ x 24″
mmpanas
(Response)

On Need
JoAnn Moore
(Inspiration)

The surf rolls and roils
intensity onto this Pacifica beach.
The froth sizzles as it settles
in the sand. Suddenly
a flock of gulls squawk and jockey
for silvery slivers of fish caught in the incoming tide.
I know how those fish feel—
caught, hurtling out of control
shoreward with only the crash
and luck to save them.
After twenty-eight years you landed
yesterday and the truth reels in me—
you don’t seem that interested now.
Maybe it is as you say:
I’ve lived a long time alone.
But I think the truth rides on those waves.
Pulled by unseen forces thousands of miles
away they ebb and surge
on schedule, like us
waning in the late day California sun.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying
or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or
artist is strictly prohibited.