Today is Poetry Friday (again)! Is time moving faster? It seems to be for me! I don’t know what happened to the last six months! They just disappeared!
Karen Edmisten is our host today. Hop over to her blog for more poetry goodness! Thanks for hosting, Karen.
This week whizzed by. I’ve got my husband’s woodworking website up and published, although I still need to complete a few tasks to improve the SEO and enable purchases. He is pleased with it, and I am glad I could help him with it.
I wrote a Medium article on Monarch Butterfly Conservation that was boosted and is doing well, increasing both my income and readership. If you have a chance, please take a moment to read it. I do not earn money from Friend links, so I am not asking because I’d be paid – just because I think that it’s an important issue.
Today, I went to the library and got a few books, in addition to the books I got on Tuesday at another branch. I picked up a poetry book and read a few. Has anyone read What Kind of Woman by Kate Baer (2020)? I read some and am not sure it’ll be for me. Tough subjects. I thought I’d share a part of one of her poems, but instead started to write one of my own.
Here is a draft:
What if?
What if the world wasn’t falling apart?
There wasn’t war, intolerance, or hatred?
What if there weren’t starving children,
Or the return of a preventable disease?
Or children could go to school without
Fear of being shot dead in a pew?
What if we helped one another?
We embraced our differences, as
Well as our similarities.
There are similarities, you know,
There are enough to make us
Reach out our hands to touch.
What if we didn’t wake in fear
Of our world becoming so
Ignorant that the only changes that come
Are oppression and suppression?
What if we had leaders we could
Look up to, telling our children to emulate?
Right now, there are a lot of what ifs….
© Draft, All Rights Reserved,
Carol Labuzzetta, 2025
Many of my ideas, of late, come from existential anxiety over the state of our world. When I find myself complaining about things I consider first-world problems – the price of travel, the cost of coffee, or being cold on an August day, I step back with shame and think – wow, there are so many more things to worry about – and then, the words just flowed onto the page.
Especially troubling for me this week is the possible end of what we know as the CDC, or the Centers for Disease Control. This organization publishes an essential handbook for healthcare providers and when you work in Medicine or Pediatrics, as I did, you consulted it often. It is known as the “Red Book.”
Infectious disease affects us all. No matter how we felt the pandemic was handled or if we followed all the guidelines to vaccinate our children, when it comes to infectious disease, we are affected by the decisions of others. I fear for what’s ahead. And yes, my fear is based on science.
The Apples in My Orchard 
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