An Apology

I never like to fill my posts
with tales of woe. We all have those,
and most are worse than mine. It feels
like telling all of you to marvel
that weeds have sprouted in my garden
when your house, maybe, just burned down.

And yet, sometimes, some times like these,
I start to think I ought to say what’s kept
me silent more days than I speak.
So, here’s the problem: two weeks in
the hospital – no, no, not me,
my husband’s father’s sick. Today,
a gift: he hasn’t gotten worse.

And so, today, I write.

(Poetry 201: Write a poem containing a simile and the word “gift”; make an acrostic with the first letters of the lines, which I haven’t done.

But Dad really is hospitalized, and it’s difficult for everyone.)

Watching the battlefield

Shielded from the world –
so strangely squiggly – we’re safe,
screened by solid glass.

(This is – at last – Day 5 of Five Photos, Five Stories. And at the same time, it’s Day 1 of Poetry 201; an alliterative haiku. Also, as asked, it has the word “screen” shoehorned within the syllables.

And, oh yes, about the title for the post: this photo was taken through the wavy old glass of a window that looks out over the site of the Battle of Antietam. On one bad day a bit over a century and a half ago, this wasn’t a screened, shielded, safe place at all.)