Poem of the Week #78

Now is Now

Hear the ringing of the school yard bell.
It reminds you that school is over.
It’s time to go out and play.

To play on the ground of this moment,
this place you have finally found, on the shores
of a distant land, not your own.

Your own past meets your future
in a here and now that is ever changing,
like the river you cannot step in twice.

Twice times the charm and sometimes,
you do get a second chance, a chance to rewind,
re-craft your life as it was meant to be.

To be love and give love. What more?
But remember, you were never not who you are.
You were always headed toward this place.

This place—this present—that at first seems
so peculiar is exactly where you belong.
Just breathe, and you will see yourself, here.


Lisa Vihos

Poem of the Week #77

Depth Charge

There is something I wanted to say
but it slipped away just over the edge
of my tongue’s dream, a wedge
in the door jamb, a niggling reminder
of you. There is only now, this now,
and all the nows of tomorrow
not yet breathed, but tracked—
nonetheless—on my heart’s radar.
The steady blip of you on the screen
comes toward me like a submarine,
and I cannot save the lives of those
trapped in the rogue metal coffin.
Each word you speak takes me
by surprise, makes me weak,
as one explosion then another
rocks the surface, while beneath
my water-logged feet, it is as calm
and still as the bottom of the ocean.

Lisa Vihos

Poem of the Week #76

How the Lonely Man Overcame his Ghost

Loneliness found him
whether he was by himself
or in a gathering of two or more.

It was the cold air
that snuck under his pant legs;
tickled like an ice cube

that a pretty girl might have slipped
down the back of his shirt
at a party he’d never attended.

It was the store clerk that nailed him
when he wanted just to browse,
try on a hat, open a pocket knife.

It was his bowl of cereal,
his winter coat, his goodnight kiss,
a note scribbled in a foreign hand.

Loneliness was the girl standing
at his side as he botched conversations
in some language that used

his same words, but different;
like pencil tracings that do not quite
match the things traced.

One day, he noticed that the veil
between him and everything else
was the dress that loneliness wore.

If he undid the weave, he could touch
the deepest part of her; learn
what she wanted from him.

One night, determined to find out,
he gave in to her secrets. Next morning,
she was nothing but a warm dent in his bed.

He forgave himself this indulgence
and began to fill the hole she’d left behind:
a clod of earth, a debt paid, some daily bread.

He was lonely for her from time
to time, after that. But in the end
that was better than being lonely for no one.

Lisa Vihos

Poem of the Week #75 and #74

Poem of the Week #75


Time Capsule - June 7

We opened
the kindergarten hand-
decorated coffee can
five years to the day
after its seal.

Inside, we found—
as though real—
the child
contained there.
We found a pair

of socks,
a lock of hair.
We found a note,
a plastic rocket
and a snippet

of ourselves
looking forward
to the future
that came all too fast
tumbling past, here

and now,
and then away;
close then far,
ablaze on the tail
of a shooting star.

Lisa Vihos




Poem of the Week #74 - May 31

Orchid

The orchids fell away
and left two dry sticks.

I kept them by the window
all through winter.

There were those who scoffed,
faithless in the ways of death.

But who laughs now?
Only me and the new blossom.


Lisa Vihos