by John Russell Monagle
Your soul is the sun in mid-afternoon, awakening my spirit as if it were a sunflower in bloom in the warm spring day, straining ever higher to bathe in your warmth. I am in soft quiet of stars and space, without a body, only sight and breath. Though I do not feel your caress nor gentle lips, in your presence I experience ever renewing life, as an infant does when touched by a mother’s fingertips.
John Russell Monagle resides in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He retired from a career at The Library of Congress. He graduated from Vermont College of Fine Arts with a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing, specializing in poetry. He has had numerous poems published, most recently in Sin Fronteras, High Plains Register, and the New Mexico Poet Laureate anthology of New Mexico poets for 2022.