Two Poems By Darrell Petska

Hen and Chicks: Genus Sempervivum
  
Like Hen and Chicks, love flourishes.
From out the loving core,
new love buds and grows,
buds and grows,
perennially from the heart. 

Bearing Witness
  
What is prayer? How shall one believe?
Love’s ascending waves swept in,
with children born one through five.
There’s no return to Standard Time.
  
Love’s waves roll on.
Grandchildren—also count them five—
stepped forth. New clocks spin,
each a vortex to draw us in.
  
No need to ply prayer beads:
prayers dance before my eyes,
love begetting love in waves
that plash on virgin shores.
  
Love that burgeons: my belief.
My prayers? I’m blessed by 10. 

Darrell Petska‘s writing has appeared in The Chiron Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Verse-Virtual, and widely elsewhere (see conservancies.wordpress.com). Darrell has tallied 30 years on the academic staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 40 years as a father of five (eight years a grandfather of five), and longer still as a husband.