by Erika D. Walker
Oh encyclopedia of delight
it would take years
to explore you, to sing
of saucy McIntosh, Ginger
Gold cello-tone, smart-aleck
Jonathan and sweet Gala (dear little bird).
And what of the bees,
little librarians, who catalogued
each blossom, tended pollen
baskets, devoted their lives
to countless spring mornings, as if
nothing mattered more—and it didn’t.
Think of how the apples grew all summer
without thought of the pandemic,
how they grew under the orange
wildfire sky (even as ash fell),
grew without thought of riots
and all the ways humans can hate each other.
And what of the slats of sunlight
that fed the mountain orchard,
filled each apple, a bucket
of light, spilled now
on my front porch
this warm autumn evening.
Erika D. Walker’s writing has been published in Literary Mama, Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Bird’s Thumb, The Human Touch Journal and Medical Literary Messenger.She is the author of a poetry chapbook, Caught in the Light, a children’s picture book, Go Outside, and is co-author of Denver Mountain Parks: 100 Years of the Magnificent Dream which won a Colorado Book Award. She is a graduate of the Poetry Book Project at the Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop. David Shaw was a film, TV and stage writer for five decades. Part of a group in the 1950s credited with creating television’s Golden Age, he wrote for series such as “Mr. Peepers” and “The Defenders.” He won a Tony award for “Redhead” and received Emmy and Golden Globe Award nominations. Shaw also taught screenplay writing at the American Film Institute. After retiring in the mid-1980s, he immersed himself in drawing and painting.
Global Poemic 