Nancy K. Jentsch

All My Days

This egg-warm day slips

into bed with me
like a sighing shadow

welcomed by a blanket
of yesterdays

who wait, still and smooth,
till one, tickled

by my toe twitch
stretches, twists

seeks out my sleeping mind.
My fifth birthday, perhaps?

Loud with party hats
and pony-tail parades.

Or an ordinary Thursday?
A filigree whisper

free as steam
leaving jasmine tea.

Now and again that October day
stirs, its wet-wool weight

robs my lungs of air
coats me in shivers

then sulks in its bolthole
like cold coffee grounds.

How many more
will bed with me
till we are borne away
as feathers, cushioned

by my last sigh?

One concert grand
and one music school

can't stitch the wounds
of thousands of greasy guns

of streets scalded by spite
families dismembered

of spring curfewed by fire
children’s dreams gagged

But imagine Gaza
with just one gun

and thousands of pianos
playing as gently

as the first spring rain
filling a cup

that had forgotten
it could hold water

NANCY K. JENTSCH has taught German and Spanish at Northern Kentucky University for over 30 years. She has published numerous scholarly articles and her short fiction and poetry have appeared in journals such as The Journal of Kentucky Studies, the Aurorean, Postcard Poems and Prose, *82 Review and Masque & Spectacle.