To the East Coast,

Then Home Again

to the West

​I’ll write about the dawning sun,

when crystal sparkles are just begun

and faint the breeze is clear outdone

by waking song compared to none.

I’ll love to write about the sky,

Montana-clear, Nevada-high,

where upwards reach the bold cacti

as if they all the earth defy.

I’ll pen the damp salt Maine air

and the harbor fragrance without compare,

the mournful call to past buckaneers

who roam the heavens, lost gondoliers.

I’ll write the westward journey home

under El Paso skies like a pleasure dome

as searing rays soften to honeycomb

in a kaleidoscopic hippodrome.

I’ll write about the relief and rest

one feels when coming over the crest

toward the home with which one is blessed,

and surcease comes after the quest.

Ann Grogan is a joyful octogenarian, pianophile, retired lawyer, and emerging poet who lives in San Francisco, CA. Her writing promotes the unequivocal permission to pursue one’s passions at any age. Her poems have appeared in Querencia, Amethyst Review, Shot Glass Journal, Little Old Lady, The Prairie Review, Oddball Journal, New Verse News, Dissent Voice, Vistas & Byways, Review, Bloomin’ Onion, and Writers Resist. Her poem “Used Envelopes” was chosen as a semifinalist in The Writing Salon’s 2025 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize. Her music, poetry, and politics website is rhapsodydmb.com.