Slow Dissolve

by Gerry Sloan

(for Miles)

No matter how quickly
you stir your tea,
the sugar takes
           
its own
 
           sweet
 
                     time.

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Gerry Sloan is a retired music professor living in the Arkansas Ozarks. His poetry collections are Paper Lanterns (2011), Crossings: A Memoir in Verse (2017), and Cemetery Plums (2026). Recent work appears in Tar River Poetry, Cave Region Review, and Slant Poetry Journal.