FALL TENDERLY

"Amidst the soft and muted light, they glowed like burning embers,
dancing in the wind around the tombstones, as I recall;
it was an autumn rainbow of red and orange and gold to be remembered.
Fall tenderly like the leaves brushing against the graveyard wall.

You were placing flowers on a grave and you had been crying,
mourning someone very dear, and you looked so very small
in this granite-filled lot of incendiary leaves and so much dying.
Fall tenderly in my arms and make me stand up straight and tall.

When you gently took my arm, it was an electric kind of sizzle,
and the rush of your touch made all of my skin crawl;
there were tears in our eyes as they met, and it began to drizzle.
Fall tenderly into the night as the whispering raindrops call.

I don't care about the past, I no longer have misgivings;
I am here for the present, for now, and I am trying to stall,
because life is for us, it is for those who are here and still living.
Fall tenderly into my heart and promise me your all."

Paperback: 80 pages
Publishing date: November 11, 2018
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1949180182
ISBN-13: 978-1949180183
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.2 x 9 inches

Shari Jo LeKane (B.A. English, Spanish; M.A. Spanish - Saint Louis University Madrid/St. Louis) lives in St. Louis, Missouri, writes articles, literary critiques, Poetry and prose.  She is a consultant for not-for-profit, business, community development, education, leadership development, disability, and elderly advocacy, and she teaches Spanish Language and Culture in a local university, and creative writing to men in a maximum-security jail and to special needs students. She wrote a novel in verse, Poem to Follow, two books of Poetry, Fall Tenderly and Surviving Gracefully, and is featured in several Poetry anthologies, including the Missouri VSA 2013 Anthology, Turning the Clocks Forward Again; Poetica Victorian; Red Dashboard Disorder Anthology: Mental Illness and Its Effects; Think Pink; The Muse India/Createspace Anthology Of Present Day Best Poems (Vols. I, II, III & IV); Bordertown Press Poetry of People on the Move; The Society of Classical Poets (Vol. I, VI); The Mas Tequila Review; Snapping Twig; The Lonely Crowd; Form Quarterly; Devolution Z; The Quarterday Review; Adelaide Literary Magazine; Adelaide Literary Awards Poetry Finalist Best of 2017 Anthology;  Adelaide Voices Literary Award for Poetry Shortlist Winner for 2018; MacroMicroCosm Literary and Arts Review: Solstice; The Road Not Taken; The Faircloth Review; Bindweed; Halcyon Days; Lunaris Review; Iconoclast; The Poeming Pigeon; Unrequited: An Anthology of Love Poems about Inanimate Objects; and Literature Today International Journal of Contemporary Literature (Vols. I, II, & VI).   Shari's Poetry has been published in several literary magazines in the U.S., Canada, England, India, Ireland, Nigeria, Portugal, Scotland, Spain and Wales, and she has been featured in spoken word on the award-winning CD, 'How Live?' with LOOPRAT.  Shari considers herself a modern formalist, addressing contemporary issues in poetic verse with a stylized language.