LOIS GREENE STONE - POEMS

​Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.

NO SKYLINE

​Lake-effect-snow.  Not familiar
during my Long Island childhood.
‘Upstate’ meant ninety miles north.

Lake Ontario: neither the Sound
nor ocean, and extended family
is four hundred miles away
because of my husband’s job.

Toronto, Canada, my nearest big
city, became a foreign country
post 9-11.

Our offspring call this ‘home’; 
inside myself, even after decades,
I’m displaced. Competition for
most annual snowfall, among
three cities, does little for my want
of spontaneous cultural diversity.

Fewer calendars are chronologically
ahead.  I pretend I’ve accepted these
surroundings as I’ve spent most years
here, but the shell that houses my soul
will eventually be lowered in reddish
soil of Long Island.

​...hobgoblins of little minds

I wanted to teach a person
not a course;  how could I
make one aware of what there
is to learn?  I searched
myself, remembering adolescent
yearnings for identity and
independence in a society
that screams compliance.
I felt challenged to reach
the slow, unsure, complicated
student with the same honor
as a bright, secure pupil.
Only the principal screamed
conformity, course topic
not student caring!  Punish,
don't praise was official
edict;  instruct group not
each student.
I struggled but
failed faculty obedience.


©1997 Green's Educational Pub. (Canada)
Reprinted: Spring 2012 Shemom 
reprinted:  fall 2014 East Coast Literary Review

​Prestidigitator

Healthy fingers
kept hurt away; sturdy
nails covered by flaking
pearlized polish tickled
while soothing childhood
fears. Fingers
swollen by persistent
arthritis continued
protection from harm.
Unadorned nails, though
brittle, smoothed my
adult frowning forehead.
Lean with waste of
terminal illness, those
fingers had the slender
feel of a young woman.
I circled them.
Daughter's
digits have no magic;
her breathing disappeared. 


©1995 Skylark
reprinted winter 2011   Shemom
reprinted July 2015 Whispers
​