For some to nurture is their nature,
meant to be parents, friends, lovers,
always the first called when tragedy arrives,
first to come when a child cries,
first to care while the lonely abide
because we know they — you offer comfort
right when I need you the most.

Bartholomew Barker works with Living Poetry. He has published a full-length collection, a chapbook and been nominated for a Pushcart and the Best of the Net. His work has recently appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Panoply, Tipton Poetry Journal, Gyroscope Review and the Naugatuck River Review among others. www.bartbarkerpoet.com

Let the heat of the sun be transmuted
to ivory by the fallow moon where polar
shade hides ice for eons

.

Grant me her gentle gaze under star-speckled
skies instead of the blinding stare of day
where color offends the eye I drink in shadows

.

Leave me the night

Bartholomew Barker works with Living Poetry. He has published a full-length collection, a chapbook and been nominated for a Pushcart and the Best of the Net. His work has recently appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Panoply, Tipton Poetry Journal, Gyroscope Review and the Naugatuck River Review among others. www.bartbarkerpoet.com

A little bird slammed into my window, mistaking it for the sky.
One of his feathers stuck to the pane, unwilling to fall.

.

I found him, a dark-eyed junco, on the ground, just sitting,
blinking and breathing, so I joined him, like we were brothers

.

in a hospital waiting room, hoping some other bird in scrubs
would arrive soon and tell us the surgery was a success

.

and our father would be okay.

Bartholomew Barker works with Living Poetry. He has published a full-length collection, a chapbook and been nominated for a Pushcart and the Best of the Net. His work has recently appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Panoply, Tipton Poetry Journal, Gyroscope Review and the Naugatuck River Review among others. www.bartbarkerpoet.com

I always find my keys
in the next to last place
I look. I keep searching
between cushions, just in case.

Maybe I’ll discover another set
that unlocks a faster car,
a bigger house, a better life,
hidden under the coffee table
or in the vegetable crisper.

Bartholomew Barker is an organizer of Living Poetry, a collection of poets in North Carolina. Born and raised in Ohio, studied in Chicago, he worked in Connecticut for nearly twenty years before moving to Hillsborough where he makes money as a computer programmer to fund his poetry habit. www.bartbarkerpoet.com