Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours features poems by northern Illinois poets and a few from other states. Today’s featured poet is Susan Goldberg.
Goldberg lives in Rockford, but she grew up on a small farm near a town in Indiana. Goldberg’s sister Jane taught her to read in a tiny school classroom--also known as their bedroom--before she started kindergarten. Goldberg said she briefly directed a grade school play, but that venture came to an abrupt halt when the actors complained that she was too bossy.
Goldberg poem “Off the Page” is personification perfection.
The pages waited patiently,
The pen was getting cross.
The loose-leaf ones were a sorry mess,
Their hopes, they feared, were lost.
The journals all stood silent
On the top row of the shelf.
The notebook wouldn’t turn around,
Kept its thoughts all to itself.
“Where could she be?” the pencils cried,
“What misfortune did befall her?”
The pencil sharpener made not one sound,
Its motor never quieter.
And so it was in that small blue house
When the writer stopped her writing,
She’d left those friends without a word,
For some pastime more exciting.
By Susan M. Goldberg 7/29/23
