Humanist Voices in Verse: Middle Age

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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Middle Age

As a boy,
I fought to keep
Death behind a locked door.

Even then,
I never slept well
always knowing it was there.

Now as a man
whose children are nearly
beyond their own childhoods,

I have allowed Death
to share my house,

So long as It agrees
to stay out of my way.

— Daniel Thomas Moran

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Please send no more than three poems for consideration per week.