Praise to Bedtime During a Pandemic
Ode to lavender lotion,
to the Alice in Wonderland recorded
forty years ago,
to my son’s drooping eyelids,
my computer’s backlit keys,
my tapping fingers
tempted by the time
of the “Mock Turtle’s Song.”
Ode to the book whispering from my bedside table,
loaned to me by a friend twenty years
deep in her novel.
Ode to the life of Penelope Fitzgerald,
who rocketed out of Oxford
only to mire in a bookshop,
a sinking barge, the chaos
of three kids to raise,
a husband at the pub.
Who at sixty-three
landed a Booker Prize.
Ode to days, months, years
dropped down the rabbit’s hole.
Ode to a city boy who weaves
a lullaby of Alice,
sirens, and his mother’s
muttering her pages complete
before the day, like a tattered sail,
drifts away on the tide.
About the Author
Ginny Wiehardt is the author of Migration, winner of the Gold Line Press Poetry Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including the Harvard Review, PN Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Subtropics, and Willow Springs. She has written about books and creative writing for MUTHA Magazine, the Austin American-Statesman, the Strand Magazine, and Scholastic.com. Her children’s fiction is represented by Tracy Marchini at BookEnds Literary, and she lives in New York City with her husband and son. Learn more about her work at www.ginnywiehardt.com.
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