Poem ©2025 Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
Hindsight is 20/20
except when
what you’d been seeing
then, back then,
was larger than life,
grander than anything
you could imagine
and so enormously
out of proportion that…
now, hindsight is
microscopic
requiring
broken circles of glass —
that you try not to bite down on
too hard or else you might
bleed even more than
you already have —
to see what was
right in front of your eyes
all along
how minuscule you had
to make yourself
to fit into that space
that small mindedness
that box with clearly defined edges
(and no imagination)
but these are things
you don’t see through
rose colored glasses
their purpose only
to color inside the lines
with one conforming color
the vision of what
you were programmed
to think you wanted
that small sweet girl
and her dolls playing
make believe
building castles out of
miss-matched pieces
instead of telescopes
with which to see
the much bigger picture.
Poem ©2025 Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
Photo from National Park Service. Poem ©2025 Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
Radar shows the storm
purple and red and gold
but all I see for miles
are shades of Cape Cod gray
pale where the sky should be
a graphite-thin horizon line
its boats like ghosts
and a graduated green-gray ocean
punctuated by the occasional
wild white cap making its way to shore
even the trees are gray this morning
their late spring effort almost forgot
inside this passing storm
whose endings promise blue.
Poem ©2025 Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
Bring me here, darling,
the day I die.
Let’s hope the seals
bob curiously at our folly
and the black cap gulls
make us laugh along with them.
Let’s manifest giant waves —
the kind little boys scream into —
and a full moon that plays
hide and seek
with the setting sun
behind billowed clouds
and tall green grasses.
We can celebrate whale spouts
and whale tails
and the fine thin lines
of birds come back —
that life goes on
and a moment of joy
can last forever, here,
a laugh, a dance, and love
worn smooth with time.
We’ll hope for a cold spring day
you and me alone on the dunes
and that one final breathtaking breeze
to push me forward into oblivion.
Photo (Race Point Beach, Cape Cod) and Poem ©2025 Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
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