This poem is my clean porch.
That painting is my sparkling oven.
The sail to Bora Bora is matching chairs
that don’t creak their age.
You cruise the linear life.
You straighten your curtains,
plant flowers in rows,
imagine your life all in order.
I splash through colors
and throw words all around the room.
You can’t imagine
what sails outside the lines.
Raised in Sharon Hill, PA, Helen Ohlson pursued several careers, and finally chose teaching. She taught Middle School English and a Gifted Seminar until retiring after 29 years. She has been writing and publishing since 1995. In 2013 her poem “Peyote Sunrise” was chosen for Times They Were Achanging – Women Remember the 60’s and 70’s, and in 2014 she and her writing group, the TransCanal Writers, won a Delaware Press Association award for their anthology Five Bridges. Helen resides in the Utopian village of Arden, Delaware, where Utopia might be up for debate, but artists and writers enjoy unabashed community support.