Tag: Tere Sievers

Two Poems by Tere Sievers

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Left Behind

One of us will stay,
the other will leave.
If you are first, I will hold
your knitted cap and red cup
to feel a trace of you.

If it’s me first,
what will you hold–
handles on the soup pot?
trowel from the garden?
the empty ring
from my finger?

*

Before You Are Gone I Miss You

I miss your half asleep voice
in the morning,
the pull of the blanket
as you get out of bed,
your shoelaces snapping
on the hardwood floor,
the half smile on your face
that isn’t a smile.
Each time you walk
out the door I miss
the tips of our fingers
touching in a long goodbye,
the feel of my hand
on the back of your sweater.

*

Tere Sievers lives in Long Beach California with her husband and four chickens and teaches in the OLLI program at CSULB. She attends a weekly poetry workshop run by her friend and gifted poet, Donna Hilbert. In that place she has learned to see clearly the joys of a long life as well as how to survive its losses. Her poems have appeared in ONE ART, A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy, Picture Show Press and others.

The Perfect Heart by Tere Sievers

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The Perfect Heart

I wait for the daily phone call
from my sister. She reports
from the Houston hospital
where her husband waits
for a new heart, a good heart.
It has been six weeks.

The call comes. They are in
pre-op waiting for the “go”
to move him into surgery,
He is wheeled in. She waits.
The surgeon comes out to report.
He is frowning, tells my sister,
“We checked the donor heart.
It has a defect. We have to abort,
wait for the perfect heart.”

Yesterday’s newspaper had a photo
of a man with his head on the chest of
another man, listening to his beating heart,
listening to the heart of his son, the donor.
Tears streamed down his face.
“That’s my boy.” he said.
His son had a perfect heart.

*

Tere Sievers writes in Long Beach, California and teaches at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at CSULB. She has been published in Pearl, A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy. Silver Birch Press and others. Her chapbook, Striking Distance, is available from Arroyo Seco Press.

On the Way to JFK by Tere Sievers

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On the Way to JFK

The great ones regard every moment like this…
– Ellen Bass

The Belt Parkway is jammed. The cabbie and I chat.
He’s from Spain, lives in Jersey, married 40 years.
I lived in Jersey before California, 50 years ago.

We talk about the weather— spring with cold wind,
grandkids, spitting rain, the Jersey towns we know.
We talk about traffic as we cross the Verrazano bridge.

He says, I enjoy every day now. Sometimes it takes
two hours from Newark to the City, the tunnels
slow, the weather bad. I just enjoy every ride.

*

Tere Sievers was born and raised on the Jersey Shore. After college, she joined Vista and volunteered for a year in Atlanta, Georgia, then married and moved to Long Beach, California. A retired Marriage and Family Therapist, she teaches Seniors in the OLLI program at CSULB. Her poems have appeared in: A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy, PEARL and Staple, as well as Picture Show Press and Silver Birch Press anthologies. Her chapbook, Striking Distance is published by Arroyo Seco Press.