No Easy Time

By Sharon Brown

The poet turns her head

to the muttering addict

on the street corner,

the girl behind the dirty window

her hands against the glass,

the woman in the head scarf

hurrying past masked agents

poised maliciously

outside the factory door.

The poet heeds

all things wanting and broken

in shadowed alleyways

or open streets

where others look away.

The poet reminds us of who we are

and what we could be.

But this is not an easy time

to be a poet,

for tenderness of spirit

or openness to pain,

when all we can feel

is anger.

Eighty years from the end

of the last world war

the American King of Beasts

quotes Mussolini, while ravaging

all things good and noble.

Be a lion, not a sheep,

he proclaims

to the enchanted sheep

gathered giddily

at his sharpened claws.

Does the beast know

how his hero met his end?

Does he know about that gas station

in Milan?

He is after all

no student of history.

I do admit to a grim satisfaction

when I think on it.

Sharon V. Brown currently lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. A retired English professor,

she writes poetry from the enriched perspective of an older woman, reflecting on loss, change

and fragility. Publications include Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place; The Lyric Magazine,

Amethyst Review, Lamar University Literary Press, Senior Class: Poems on Aging; Cirque

Literary Journal; and Still Points Quarterly.