New Poetry by Kenneth Pobo

Her Email Says "How Are You?”

In my thirties I kept getting

things done, fixing the undone,

more than a little done in.  I had

a drive to succeed, to please

others who shared that drive. 

By forty I drove myself over

a mental cliff. 

Now, in my late sixties, I don’t

recognize who I was then.  I sit

ön the porch with my husband.

If we see a bluebird,

that’s quite a successful day. 

I’m disturbed not by papers

that ache for attention but

by a truck’s thud breaking the calm. 

That passes and a pink hollyhock

starts to puff open.  The sky

is usually blue until clouds rush

above leafy trees.  

- © Kenneth Pobo 2022

Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections.  Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), and Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press). His work has appeared in  Asheville Literary Review, Cordite, Brittle Star, Washington Square Review, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere.