Restricted

by Susan Shea (October 2024)

I can’t even appreciate the weeds today
–
meant to be flowers in season
to look at me, one by one, assure me
beauty is reliable, wonder is allowed
–
tell me that I have been given eyes to see
every individual blossom, colorful and
free in its turnings
–
instead, they are strangling each other
in a mass, overcrowded, thrown together
by a selfish wind of this time, lied to
told they will not choke each other out
–
but they have lost their room, their shapes
they can no longer move or whistle
their own songs in the breezes
–
they have become a dump
of useless idiots cramped into a dark lot
that does not fit their destiny, left
with no ground for their seeds to flourish
–
while a radical violinist serenades them
telling them that she and her handlers
have reinvented sight and sound, wind, and fire
–
telling them they are better off with less
while they watch her take all the sun
she needs to mock us and to cackle
on her man-made mountaintop
–

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Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist who was raised in New York City, and is now living in a forest in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Since she has returned to writing poetry this year, her poetry has been accepted in a few dozen publications, including Feminine Collective, Ekstasis, Persimmon Tree Literary Magazine, and The Avalon Literary Review.

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