San Diego Poetry Annual

My poem, "A Sunday Morning in Hofstetten", was accepted into the San Diego Poetry Annual, 2021-2022. It was also featured in the SDPA writer’s retreat/spoken word poetry event at the Acid Vault in San Diego.

A Sunday Morning in Hofstetten

Church bells toll over a still graveyard 

Summoning swirling spirits 

To gather and join us for breakfast. 

Enterprising bees flit in and out 

Of the red rose-wreathed window 

To sip nectar from sticky fingers. 

A forest stretches green to the sun 

Castle ruins forgotten— 

Crumbling beneath drunk dancing branches. 

Homemade shoes on a cobblestone path 

Skipping with laces undone 

Stopping— sudden— upon the strange sight.

A scar in the street— pitted pavement.

Is it here that it happened? 

In this sleepy town, a place called home?

Here— 

The farmhouse where mother screamed to hide.

Here— 

The sweet shop where children ducked and cried.

There— 

The warfront where father fell and died.

Us against them and them against us

Foes opposed, each toes the line

But no one wins, the beast devours all. 

Some days I can taste ash in the air

Smell cinders of stories burnt

Before they could be written or shared.

Wails of widows past whistle on winds

I hear their desperate pleas

Memories surface in silver streams.

Yet on this morning the sun shines through

A child laughs and ties their shoe

The world spins on, and so must we too.