Carol Berg

SO WELCOMING

I don't go fast enough
through the green light for
steam-powered man.
I don't go green enough
through the streaming light
for hardware-man.
I go, don't I, enough enough
with hotel-variation man.
I go fast enough. Enough
with the wide-appeal man.
Politician powered and doesn't fast.
Private man with the hedges and gates
and fences and walls and bricks
and mortar. I climb and climbing.
Privacy and locked door
man they work out together.
The forty-ritual man whom I loved
with his winged hands moving over me.
Forty-ritual man who became cornered
man who became unable man.
Men, oh so always, are there and there and there.

Carol Berg's poems are forthcoming or in The Journal, Spillway, Heron Tree, Redactions, Pebble Lake Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, and Verse Wisconsin. Her poems have received Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. Her most recent chapbook, Her Vena Amoris, is available from Red Bird Chapbooks.