No, he says, I’m not coming
to the reading.  It’ll just be
the Usuals, reading their usual

Weekend Zen Retreat Awakening Poem
Cat Cancer Survivor Sonnet
Bird Puppy Villanelle
Prose Poem rant about Birthing,
Motherhood, Menopause,  
followed by a Haiku of Angst,
and a Renga of Missed Chance Regret.

Just the Usuals, he sighs. 

I see he has no ken of change:  I Ching.
Heraclitus’ River.  The roll of our breaths
out and in, out and in, refreshed blood
flooding our yin yang veins. 

He thinks tomorrow’s reading will replicate
the last, but it cannot.  One of our number
has gone on far ahead, scouting a new venue,
testing acoustics.  She's seen all the chairs
placed in a circle, awaiting us all. 

Yvette Viets Flaten, of Eau Claire, is active in the local arts community and her poetry has appeared in numerous journals. She won the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Muse Prize for Excellence in Poetry in 2008 and 2013 and the Wisconsin Writers’ Association’s Jade Ring for poetry in 2010 and 2015. She loves languages, cooking, and travel.