WHEN SOMEONE WHO LOVES YOU IS FAR AWAY
A phone call, what is that,
Not a hug.
What is a text but an uncaring shout
A reminder that someone didn’t care enough to call.
Letters and punctuation on facebook messenger,
The empty hands of emojis and needling for validation.
None of it says anything of the roads we have known,
The sidewalks and fields we have attended.
Pine Street and Heather Stone Court
Entrada Drive and Pacific Avenue.
I wish there was a way to return to those places,
Together.
And in that space remember,
Or be courageous enough to say,
I love you
I am proud of you
My life, means something because you are in it
So many other truths
On Tern Circle and Congress Avenue
White River Junction and Jacksonville
Vancouver Island and Austin, Texas.
There is a wall of love, a billowing sail,
A cloud of it
Or a wind of it.
It blows to you.
See it or not, it is there.
I wish you could feel it
When history is too heavy
And the sound of no voices is too much;
That this wind would rest on you like warm blankets
Sewn together from far far away.
_______________
Marc Janssen
Review by Dave Mehler
I’ve recently read Marc Janssen’s book November Reconsidered, which ingeniously considers different days from different years and seasons of life in November, and he has also been a past contributor across several past issues. I think these more recent poems are striking a different note than I’ve seen yet. Instead of the eccentric humor and quirky noticings of things, I’m finding meditations on local, natural beauty, attention to music, and especially here love in family relationships. I think Marc has a problem with technology and the distance it can bring–that’s here. There’s courage here, which I also saw in November Reconsidered, but I think there’s been a shift and this poet is expanding and developing more, and adding lyric beauty, deeper feeling, risking perhaps but not crossing over into sentimentality as Richard Hugo advised good poets to do. It requires bravery, depth (and wisdom?) to pull off. What’s really funny, is I advised him editorially to snip the last stanza, but he stuck to his guns. I realized he was completely right! Good for him and shame on me!