One poem by Michaeleen Kelly

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Whistleblower

The misdeeds and generally bad ideas of her coworkers

permeated Ann’s consciousness at every workplace.

She channeled Aristotle in his call for an ethical life,

never holding back calling them to task

for their regular failures at reasonableness.

Agreeing with him that genuine friendships

being possible only with her moral equals

necessarily eliminated all the conformists.

Her predictable retreat to her Michigan garden,

was a natural test site for Aristotle’s balanced life.

There her generosity of spirit

proved uncompromised, unbalanced, un-Aristotelian.

There she willed the extreme, heedless giving of time

to the most flawless, unforgiving mistress - Mother Nature herself.

MICHAELEEN KELLY is an emerita professor of Philosophy at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her poetry has been published in Blue Collar Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, Main Street Rag Anthologies, Dunes Review and Greywolf Press. She is a two-time winner of the Kent County Dyer-Ives prize for poetry.