Michael Jerome Cunningham is the winner of the Performance Poets Association 2021 Poetry Prize. He is published in the October 2021 edition of Honeyguide Literary Magazine and the Fall 2021 issue of Druidical: a Bardic Art and Literary Journal. Also, in the Indolent Books online anthologies: Poems in the Aftermath and What Rough Beast. He is a certified Forest Therapy Guide and loves spending time outdoors, especially with his wife and son.
Hope Mercy
Does the summer tree
wait longingly for autumn?
Yearning to cast leaves
to the ground? No,
Mercy, nothing comes quickly
by expectation.
It is a miracle
more precarious than breathing-
trust it will happen.
The same way each leaf unfurls itself from the city branches.
In nature’s good time
that cannot be rushed or
reasoned with.
Pray to the same lips
which makes flowers open, one
who never tires of you.
Love is a garden within,
open your arms and see
your lover is here.