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March 2016
Joan Leotta
joanleotta@atmc.net

My husband and I live by the beach where I go to avoid housework and hunt for seashells (when I’m not chipping away at the computer).  I also work as a story performer.  My poems are just starting to find places in journals.  Although this is the first time my work has been published in Verse-Virtual, I have enjoyed commenting on the wonderful poems here and being part of the community as a reader.

On the platform,

 
pacing up and down,
then sitting in the designated zone
I await your arrival.

A train arrives.
Coats, arms, legs, and umbrellas
tumble from each car. 
When they separate a bit
I scan all the many colored 
petal faces.
Your face
is never one of the petals
that blows toward the log, 
the bench where I wait. 

I try to read a newspaper
but my eyes stray 
too often to the tracks.
Another train screeches in.

I stand. Are you 
on this train?
The arrivals swarm 
around me.
As their numbers diminish,
I realize that once more, you
have not come in.

I consider sitting down
to wait still longer.
The train huffs and puffs, 
its engines readying to move along.
I salute that wisdom,
gather my thoughts,
and join those 
leaving the station.
In my own departing, 
I realize, at last,
I have arrived.
No need to wait for you.
©2016 Joan Leotta
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