Across – Diane Webster

Across - Diane Webster

I hopscotch across
alternating white and pavement
blocks of the crosswalk –
one foot for white,
two feet for pavement
until I leap atop
the gutter curb
and must become
an adult again
on the dull sidewalk
until I step across
a crack zigging.
“Step on a crack,
break your mother’s back.”
So now I Mother May I
big steps down the sidewalk
to the next crosswalk
that gallops like a zebra
across the street.

Diane Webster retired in 2022 after working forty years for a local newspaper. Now she has time to read all the books she wanted to read and, of course, more time to write and submit new writings. She enjoys drives in the mountains to appreciate all the scenery and wildlife Colorado has and incorporates those sights into her poems. Diane’s mind is always trolling for writing ideas from her memories, conversations, rewinding what her eyes have witnessed, what that smell triggers, what that ordinary object might look like. She looks for images to fill her writing. She has an attention for details that helps her writing as well as her joy as an amateur photographer. Diane’s work has appeared in El Portal, North Dakota Quarterly, Verdad and others. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022 and 2023 and was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022.