by Ann Neuser Lederer
A man crawls
into his own bedroom
window.
It's already night.
He might be contagious.
Soon, a tone—a lone violin—
seeps through the shut room's door.
A grandma nudges—you
can join in with your dad.
A few bars, back and forth.
An unseen whispered conversation.
In the dark of the morning
he descends.
Instead of the bus he walks.
Invisible birds announce it is day.
All playgrounds are locked, the schools deserted—
the children still safe in their sleep.
 |
| Photo by Carol Dorf |
A man crawls
into his own bedroom
window.
It's already night.
He might be contagious.
Soon, a tone—a lone violin—
seeps through the shut room's door.
A grandma nudges—you
can join in with your dad.
A few bars, back and forth.
An unseen whispered conversation.
In the dark of the morning
he descends.
Instead of the bus he walks.
Invisible birds announce it is day.
All playgrounds are locked, the schools deserted—
the children still safe in their sleep.
Ann Neuser Lederer's poetry and nonfiction are published in journals such as Diagram, Passages North, Brevity, 2 River Review, and UCity Review whose "noteworthy" section presents ten of her poems. Her work is also honored in Best of the Net and Ohio State University's Vandewater Poetry Award; published in anthologies such as A Call to Nursing and The Country Doctor Revisited; and in her chapbooks Approaching Freeze (2003), The Undifferentiated (2003), Weaning the Babies (2007), and Fly Away Home (2019). Ann was born in Ohio and has worked there and surrounding states as a Registered Nurse.
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