Two poems

Impermanence

Today

I watched surf

seep into a footprint

that looked like yours.

Canals of toe depressions

melted

into waves.

The sole, the heel,

eroded

until form became suggestion.

The promise is

that sand shifts --

in summered light, or under

bruised sky nursing storms.

You cannot hold a handful.

It escapes fisted fingers.

And just as I start to grow old

my hand empties

but for finger nail

half-moon crescents

clawed into skin.

There are

no chasms between us.

Only oceans.

Lovers, Learners, Liars and Friends

We walk the ring of this circus

as we circle the fires between us --

yearning shimmers in corners,

like yellow shadows

beneath the door.

And with hands covering our eyes,

through unholy spaces between,

we see seconds flare long enough

only to watch them go.

Cynthia Ventresca spend her days working in community relations for a local utility, and her nights wrestling with words and studying for a degree in English from the University of Delaware. She has had work published in Eye on Life Magazine, Third Wednesday Magazine, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, 50 Haikus, Three Line Poetry, and Fourth & Sycamore. She was winner of the July 2018 Poem of the Month Contest, sponsored by Cosmographia Books.