27 April 2009

April 27 - Poem A Day Challenge - Longing

Today's prompt: "I want you to write a poem of longing. You or someone (or something) else should be pining for someone or something. Maybe a cat is longing to get outside the house. Maybe a teenager is longing to get away from his or her small town. And, of course, there's always the longing poem of love." Poetic Asides



Instamatic Retrospective At The Family Museum

The pictures throughout the album are faded,
colors mute as twice captured memories.
Names, dates, places flow across the reverse
of the snapshots in an elegant script, serving
as broken-handled spades not quite capable
of digging up the garden dirt of the past.
Placed in cemetery rows on the kitchen table,
the photographs formed the arc of a misplaced
childhood. No circuits fire-jump across the gap.
She might as well study the countenance
of strangers. The name on the back is her
name, the face on the print has dark eyes,
her eyes, but the expression is not the one
cross-examined in the mirror every morning.
It is far too bold and open, staring straight past
her shoulder to a future that never did happened.


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