This month’s poetry corner brings together four powerful voices exploring love, longing, memory, and renewal. From Carol Ostrow’s tender celebration of romantic connection, to Stephanie Sloane’s honest portrait of feeling unmoored, to Nicole Freezer Rubens’ meditation on heritage and resilience, and Madlyn Epstein Steinhart’s call to step boldly into one’s own life—each poem offers a moment of reflection and emotional truth. These writers remind us that the heart’s journey is never linear, but always deeply human.

Love is in the Air

My heart, it seems, I cannot control,
Not to seem maudlin or even droll,
Just a simple statement of my dreaming,
That love gives my life a deeper meaning,

That feeling of excitement when he holds my hand,
The respect that is given without a demand,
The glances with softness and absence of guile,
Trusting what is behind that flashing smile,

That sweet face I hold in two hands to kiss,
Knowing he’s feeling that same kind of bliss,
The flooding of emotions from head to toe,
Can life be more meaningful i’d like to know?

Love comes in so many different forms,
Children, music, good food are the norms,
I happen to enjoy the one between sexes,
And suffer the most when they become exes,

Oh well I say with sincere emotion,
Enjoy the moments without commotion,
Because we know with joy unending,
It is definitely worth the time we are spending.

~Carol Ostrow, author Poems from My Pandemic Pen and Poetry in Motion with Much Emotion

Fragmented

I’m in Florida
But am not sure why
My head is obviously somewhere else
Thank goodness for my son
Who helped me move without being there
Now I am here but my things are somewhere else,
A place I only saw once, for a few minutes
No wonder I feel discombobulated, completely out of sorts
My things are in two places, and I am in a third
It all makes no sense
And I go along with it
Pretending it is normal
But it definitely is not!
I order additional furniture without seeing it
It is delivered, but I am not
The furniture doesn’t help
It only makes me want to be there more
When I can be there,
Will it all come together again?
Will I come together again?
I hope that it does and I do,
So that I can be whole again

~Stephanie Sloane, author of Dear Me

Rooted

As the trees around me
shed their recently green leaves
now beautifully faded
to some shade relative to ochre,
and swan dive to the ground,
I know that the loose leaves
that have been set free
are still invisibly tethered
to their roots in the earth.

When I light a tall tapered
Shabbat candle
and the wick inside the wax
burns down
plastering its holder
with a hard to remove
dried on substance,
I know that stem of strength
is tied to the same light
my ancestors watched glow
in the generations that preceded me,
even to those who perished
and could no longer light,
because they were extinguished by hate.

Pull is a concoction of gravity and heritage,
memory and dream,
that drain to a dusty place
that existed before me
and will survive our enemies.
The pull is stronger now
as this winter approaches,
but we are ready with our rakes and our matches
to clear our illuminated path
of a shade relative to ochre,
and carry on.

~Nicole Freezer Rubens, author The Long Pause and the Short Breath

It is your Turn