Johanna Shapiro, PhD
Have you ever noticed how
unprepared we are
for the problems life throws at us?
We are very unprepared
We are so unprepared
so beyond our comfort zone
it doesn’t make sense
Miscellaneous Poems
Living with Cancer
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
In memoriam, Marcia Weinstein
What I wonder about
What I worry about
Is that we really didn’t talk about it
Enough
Or really at all
Only obliquely
The way light bounces off a mirror
At an angle
The way eyes inadvertently
Slant from an ugly face
All our conversations on the subject
Dribbled away
“Let’s wait and see”
“I just don’t know”
We told each other
I wait for the sound of his words
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
I wait for the sound of his words, expecting them to drop like shards of light on my own confusion. Still he sits there, without speaking. Perhaps he is collecting his thoughts. Chin in hand, he seems puzzled, even ten years later. Then, as if pressing a button, he begins to speak. He remembers he had the day off. It was a typically beautiful southern California day, sun glinting off the Pacific Ocean, waves begging companionship. So he decided to use this free day, this day outside time and space, to go surfing. He remembers also that when he came home, it was already late in the afternoon, the sun almost used up. He can’t remember why he switched on the TV, he didn’t often watch because the sound was broken, but that day he did. He watched without sound in the fading rays of the sun as the city burned and died. Maybe he remembers more, but now, again, he is silent. There is no sound between us.
ACCIDENT on PCH
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
12/15/11
We are sitting
drinking coffee, laughing
talking about our kids
The day is bright and happy
The air is crisp, the sky blue
the clouds white, the trees green
The people around us
are laughing too
glad to be
drinking coffee on such a day.
The Coal Miner
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
I was born in West Virginia
To a family of mining men
And women widowed young
I was the only boy in that company town
To come down with polio in the summer of ’27
Two girl s got sick
But I was the only boy
It was curious.
My leg brace was a curiosity too
When I came home
From the hospital in Lexington
A year and six surgeries later
A Daily Musing
Johanna Shapiro, Ph.D. and Deane H. Shapiro, Jr., Ph.D.
A collection of poetry, Chinese linked verse.
Poems (1956-1958)
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
These poems were written by our daughter Johanna in Mallorca, the Ticino, and Barbados. At the start of our trip she was seven years old, when we returned she was nine.