In hue of brightest blue.
Phantom straits on an endless sea
Seem endless, too,
Stretching to phantom shores.
Here and there, marshmallow pillars,
Canyons, or so they appear to be.
And floating beneath it all,
Roads I see
That lead to white infinity,
Fluffy ghost-town scenes.
“Are you still marching in the mornings?” a friend asked.
Adjusting her earphones, she sets forth, strident strains of Schubert in her head.
The Waterworks looms nigh, and just as British soldiers once tramped the Plains of Abraham, so she, in her New-Balance shoes, trods Waterwork's plains.
Parked cars bar the path, but maneuvering with a deftness born of experience, she averts attack of the side mirrors. To a native she waves a hasty greeting. Then, determined cadence resumed, stays focused on her mission.
Laying claim at last to the lot end-to-end, regrouping, she plans her strategy before crossing no-man's land – between The Waterworks and St. Margaret's Hospital.
Once in hospital territory, advances to its boundary, where, alas, fatigue, ultimate enemy, forces defeat. Then begins the long retreat home.
Assignment: Create an image: a negative and a positive
The positive: Anna, just three; happy to be with me, in Squaw Valley Park.
The negative: Anna, just three; frightened as she could be, because of me.
Anna, my sweet Anna,
Do you remember our troll
Who lived under the bridge in the park
Where you and I spent happy hours
When you were very young?
This morning, as early as eight at best,
When the sun still hugged horizon's crest
Under a sky yet tinged with dark,
I walked through our special park
And thought of you.
I passed by the bridge we used to cross,
Remembering how you would scurry
As fast as your little legs could hurry
Lest the troll beneath, disturbed from sleep,
Should toss us into the waters of the creek.
I really thought that you knew
The story I had fabricated wasn't true.
But when you were older you said
You used to tremble with dread,
Thinking the troll real.
Today a closed-for-repairs sign
Bars the bridge we considered yours and mine,
And the rickity bridge of our private lore,
Replaced by a newer, sturdier span,
Will be no more.
So forgive me, my sweet Anna.
I thought of you today
And of the hours we shared.
I hadn't meant to make you scared.
[An attempt at using sound and assonance in a poem, to tell a story and describe an emotion.]
Like a lament from distant hills,They fill me with pride in your talent
And spaun so many memories of you.
I remember how as littlest child you fussed and fumed
over wrinkled socks within your tiny shoes;
How there was no peace until shoes were removed
and socks made smooth.
I remember your protests and how you'd fidget
over shirt sleeves wrinkled under your jacket.
Can any of us ever forget your cries from your carseat?
Help! I'm stuck!
Forgive us now, for failing then to see
your ever restlessness to be free,
Be that as it may, Alex, suffer me to say
I hope to live a bit longer yet
to glory in the pride of all you will do,
to share in further heights destined for you.
Where memory redefines,
Slideshows of a long life lived,
Like electric impulses,
Flicker and snap.
The roads traveled over the years,
The joys, the hurts, the fears,
Nestled within, private and deep,
In metaphor cross and recross
When we sleep.
At dinner, with butter pecan ice cream and your pizzelles,
We gave the Old Year its send-off.
All the while, memory of my father crowded my heart,
How he would sit at our kitchen table
Just a week or so before Christmas,
Feeding the pizzelle iron with golden batter.
The batter, some of it leaking out, sizzled when he closed the lid.
When each pizzelle was baked, oh so gently he would lift it from the iron
And add it to the others on a cooling rack.
When they had cooled sufficiently, he stacked them in towers on a plate.
Then, smiling, he would offer them out to us,
Who, like hungry urchens, gobbled them up.
As I bit into your pizzelles last night, Teresa,
I pictured the boy he must have been, this beloved Daddy of mine,
Walking and working the family fields in Sant' Alessio,
Fishing in the fiume near by,
Trodding off over Tuscan hills to school,
Two or three books, perhaps bound by leather strap,
slung over his young shoulder.
Oh, Teresa, do you see?
Your pizzelles, delicious as they were, were so much more.
They were memories sweet with longing for a father long gone,
A father still mourned, who had filled our every days
With his labors of love for us.
Thank you, Teresa, for the pizzelles.