Humanist Voices in Verse: We Sit in Gardens
This week’s featured poem is by Cleo Fellers Kocol. A prize-winning poet, Kocol’s poetry has been published widely. Also a novelist, her new book The Good Foreigner is available now through Amazon.com. A longtime humanist, she received the Humanist Heroine award in 1988, served on the board of directors of the American Humanist Association, and continues to be a feminist-humanist active in her local community.
If you’d like to contribute original poetry to Humanist Voices in Verse, write to hnn@americanhumanist.org with “Poetry” in the subject line. Please send no more than three poems for consideration per week.
We Sit in Gardens
where forsythia froths
and lily pads float on
man-made ponds like
dreams long discarded.
Or we gather around
white tablecloths in dining
rooms with crown molding
– three couples who sup
together periodically and
dive into idealism cast
aside years ago. Light
flickers, candles burn down,
wine bottles empty, and for
a while it is as if all the things
we dreamed at twenty still
waited beyond the bend
of wars gone wild.
–Cleo Fellers Kocol