About our Name

Ever notice how the conversation stutters when you tell someone you’re a poet? Members of the Poetry Society of America report these common responses:

• What are your poems about?
• Do they rhyme?
• I used to write poems when I was a teenager

(Source: Job Jibber Jabber by Ben Schott, New York Times, August 4, 2013)

My own answers to these comments, in order:

• Love, death—you know, the usual.
• Mostly not—it’s really hard to rhyme well.
• Why did you stop?

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A Little Night Music

Alan Meyrowitz, a friend from the Northern Virginia Poetry Salon, sent us this poignant short poem that captures a life in a few lines.

Night Lilies
By Alan Meyrowitz

Shy by day, tightly furled,
heeding nightly call to bloom.

How much the same,
my love demure till waning light.
So joy is sown in garden’s bed
as well our own.

Yet passion’s not by season bound—
lilies will be gone by fall.

Alan Meyrowitz received his doctorate in computer science from George Washington University in 1980 and retired from the federal government in 2005 after a career in research. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including California Quarterly, Diverse Voices Quarterly, River Oak Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Forge, where “Night Lilies” was published in the Winter 2011-12 issue.