By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor
A note to encourage you
in these challenging times.
May you walk through the new year
with grace and ease.
May you have strength and resilience.
Be safe and healthy.
Be filled with joy and lifted up in love.
By Steven Michael Krystal | Featured Contributor
I have a friend, so do you,
We share laughs and smiles all day through,
For all of my life, telling me what to do,
A small voice from within, tried and true.
When we are kids, fun and play,
Days of bliss, all is okay,
As we grow up, things don’t go our way,
Life turns amiss, a steep price to pay.
By John Vasak | Featured Contributor
I’ll be okay I always say
Those three words I say again and again
It’s been forty-three years in this life of mine
And it feels like I do this all of the time
I’ve felt love and bliss
And that feeling from a kiss
I’ve seen beauty, hope, and people cope
With life and loss and the meaning of a cross
By Laura Fox | Featured Contributor
She sleeps
Beneath a stone
With pallid lips sealed tight.
But when come shades of night
Then forth, alone,
She creeps.
Her wan
And ghastly frame
Should, ages since, be dust –
Yet, after death, she must,
Despite the same,
Live on.
By Brittny Lee | Featured Contributor
Trees still grow
Flaming crimsons and candy apple greens
On a street where she loved
and lived and sang with the stars
Her dream consumed her
A temptress all in white
Blush red among alabaster cheeks
becoming love tumbling down hills with her dream
Heart beating vital blood
Tendons stretching and breaths coming out in rasps
She reached her goal
By Judith Evans | Featured Contributor
Heavy steps through the clinic door.
Scores of faces, waiting room eyes
Follow my feet to the check-in desk.
Finally, a space for my face near the water cooler.
18 minutes of freedom, wishing our dog were here.
I dream, screaming silently till I hear my name.
Dead down the hall: sterile chairs, swabs, lidocaine,
Blood draw, raw nerves, tsk tsk near the back of my head.
Are you in pain? As if I were deaf.
No space for my face any more.
Meanwhile, it’s snowing.
Will this freeze cease?
By Anabel Geneta-Raymundo | Featured Contributor
Author’s Note: This is a poem illustrating the situation of many of our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan.
***
Teasing. Playing. Children laughing.
Planting. Caring. Mothers preaching.
Resting. Working. Fathers sweating.
Dreaming. Relishing. People trying.
Growing. Reaching. Afghans thriving.
Living. Loving. ‘til Taliban’s coming.
Now hiding. Panicking. Borders closing.
Looking. Waiting. Others escaping.
![Chronic Pain [a poem]](https://i0.wp.com/phoebemd.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/chronic-pain-poem.jpg?fit=932%2C498&ssl=1&resize=40%2C40){kind=small}
![A Cheerful Heart [a poem]](https://i0.wp.com/phoebemd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/a-cheerful-heart-poem.jpeg?fit=1000%2C563&ssl=1&resize=40%2C40){kind=small}
![I'll Be Okay [a poem]](https://i0.wp.com/phoebemd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/pexels-roman-odintsov-4552990.jpg?fit=1200%2C788&ssl=1&resize=40%2C40){kind=small}
