This week’s poem is by Daniel Thomas Moran, TheHumanist.com poetry editor, retired dentist and Boston University Assistant Professor, former Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, New York and the author of seven collections of poetry. He lives in Webster, New Hampshire with his wife, Karen, where he has taken on the role of Unemployed Poet and Anecdotalist. His recently published collection of poems, A Shed for Wood, has been lauded for its “profound and intelligible poetry” (author Peter Quinn) while Moran is described as “a distinctive American voice which deserves an attentive hearing” (Elizabeth Heywood, Acumen Literary Journal). His website is www.danielthomasmoran.net.

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Opus 75

             for Samuel Menashe

Regret is the
great venom,
the path not
chosen leads
only to the lost.

No reiteration
of moments.
No reversal
of seasons.

Just as death
lives in the
shadows left
behind, the day’s
fruits will
lie wilted by
a sun which
made them sweet.

Anticipation can be
the elixir vitae.
But for certain,
there is only
this day and the
next., this day
and the next,
this day and the next.

—Daniel Thomas Moran

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If you’d like to contribute original poetry to Humanist Voices in Verse, write to poetry@thehumanist.com with “Poetry” in the subject line. Please send no more than three poems for consideration per week.