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| Small Talk After-dinner mints dissolve slowly, leaving a subtle taste of wintergreen upon my tongue. The wine has lost its sparkle, conversation long since melted into silence, dead before the candle’s glow. Where did you go? When? So long ago now, I can hardly remember when your heart was here and after-dinner love talk carried on and on, long after the mints and the wine were gone. |
| Reflections At the crossroads you stand elegant as an unadorned satin gown white stone basking in sunshine tall spire majestic against purple sky A landmark rising above the town Your morning peal lures me here to sit on sun-kissed steps reflecting on a day long ago when time stood still and a hush fell as a reluctant bride-to-be entered your doors to pledge undying love while a mother wept At dawn her unanswered dying plea hovered in the stillness and I set my jaw in granite unyielding as your stony walls while she begged forgiveness for the part she played in my long-ago fall into the silent sorrow of a loveless bond |
| Fearless No fear of storms or heights, strays or strangers, your engaging smile bedazzled everyone touched by its radiance. You could prattle for hours to a flower strike up a friendship with a bag lady, endear yourself with equal devotion to in-laws or outlaws. No black or white, you borrowed the hues of the rainbow and applied them with slap-dash abandon when creating your palette of friendship. Is this the reason you were snatched away so suddenly, with no chance to say good-bye to a multitude of friends who marvelled at your open and trusting nature. Should I have taught you differently, cautioned your every move, made you afraid of your own shadow? Only God and the devil that ended your life can answer, now. |
| Moratorium Gnarled knuckles misshapen hands, once rubbed raw with briny cuts from sixty years of net-hauling, now lie idle like beached dories dotting the shoreline twiddling away time, past where moratoriums and memories collide |
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| *Reflections appeared in Epiphany Magazine July 2003 |