VJ’s Weekly Challenge: peripheral – One Woman’s Quest II (onewomansquest.org)
Periphery
The whitest teeth
Of one brother’s smile.
Hair so black
The curls shine blue,
My mother’s hair
A forehead with a line
Of slicked back black hair,
My real father.
Clark Kent glasses,
The frames of the coke
Bottle bottom glasses,
My other brother.
The whisper of an accent
mingles with scent of Old Spice cologne,
the man I thought was my father–
Fleeting things—
Such imagery captured briefly
In the corner of the senses
Some strange trick of heart and mind—
The mind’s empty, missing parts perhaps
Playing the trickster
With edges of the senses,
So we think we see, hear, smell
The seeds of things we grieve.
Images of the dead
Cannot be real.
Such things as ghosts
Do not exist.
These ephemeral flashes
Of the senses share no breath,
No grace of God gives life
To them as they melt away
Before a half breath
Can be taken.
So, I stood
Still
Afraid to breathe
Afraid to blink
Or let the tears
That gathered fall
When I saw
A lion’s mane of hair
As you tilted your head back
To smile—
For six years—
I had not seen you
Felt you
At all–
Until
I stood
Gazing at Van Gogh’s
Field with Irises near Arles–
Your favorite flower—
Irises–
and art you loved—
the first time
in six years,
I feel you nearby—
I am stilled—
Until
Someone else moves
Beside me,
A distraction,
And you are gone.
But you linger with me
Like a wonderful and strong
perfume
