It was all yesterday.
The strength of bearing,
kindness of touch, and
shoulders that kept
my life upright and moving
are too frail for even
a last embrace.
-for my cousin
memory
Growing Old With Roberta
Who thinks about being old
when we’re six or seven?
Like next Christmas, or going
to high school, or being able to read
thick books, tomorrow
is merely a concept
and concept is only
a word that small child can’t pronounce.
But here I am
old, complete with cane and grumpy impatience
and seven years old feels strange now.
One or two things are still the same
sometimes. I still wonder
about where you went those long years past.
Why you could, I couldn’t, and if I ever would.
For myself, I hope
to never have a marked place where stray
souls come thinking to find me,
the way I sought to find you and discovered
only a grave
with a weathered stone.
Buttercups
Buttercups
Who is the bald
old geezer
in this photograph?
Not my erstwhile lover,
surely not
the longhaired,
clear eyed
youth who offered
perfect
yellow blossoms to me
in the palm of his hand.
Random memory on International Women’s Day
Back in the 1980s I was managing an office staff of about 4 and a cashiering staff of about 40. It was Spring, which was our busiest time. It was Saturday, which was our busiest day. Lines at the checkouts were long and relentless. The husband of one of the cashiers phoned me. He had unexpected company and needed his wife to come home immediately to make coffee. I told him that I would talk him through making the coffee, but that I wouldn’t let her go home. I explained what happened to the cashier and she said that she agreed with my decision and that her husband was being unreasonable. She finished the day, then never came back.
Medal of Honor
In every dogwood blossom his face
smiles too perfectly.
He never yelled about
my forgotten homework; never
buried my first dog by the fence
in our backyard; never
went eyeball-to-eyeball
with a used car salesman
to get my first car.
He’s a photograph now,
an old one in gray scale.
Only I remember
how the dogwood bloomed
the last time he leaned from the train
to wave goodbye.
~Note: Written to honor Technician Fifth Grade F. Peden who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on February 13, 1946. All events but the dogwood and the train are fictional.
Archaeology
Drowned cities
spanning the globe
from John Franklin to Roald Amundsen,
all claim to be Atlantis.
Each one shows off their stone arch. Each one
bears a painted image of warriors still in battle,
or women collecting jugs of water despite
being in the deepest fathoms of it.
Each one declares authenticity, holds up their ruins
and begs to be remembered, as
all of us ask to be remembered,
to be loved for eternity:
I was here. I was here.
Please
never forget me.
© 2021 Vera S. Scott
“. . . there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.” – Plato
Are tenet and faith the same word, when we’re talking to ourselves?
Even not being there
doesn’t mean that they’re not
there. I mean, I’ve always
thought, that is, I’ve always hoped,
they are
a hair’s breadth out of reach,
one glance
from my trembling, angry, forgiving
and unforgivingly lonely,
missing-them heart.
Dream State
Even the places here are turning
to dreams.
From the bus window, I point out landmarks:
I used to live on the second floor of a blue house down that street
I used to buy lunch from the hot buffet in that market and then skip dinner
I used to feed the feral cats in that park and was especially fond of a black and white kitten
but I don’t remember
the street address, the best entre, the kitten’s name.
Where I was and
who we were
a decade ago, two decades ago,
half-a-century past
is nearly unconjurable,
as if it never,
as if you never
happened
at all.
Fallen Eagle
When memory flutters
then
into now and the physical
feathers
thin,
the hollow
weight of flight
snaps in min-arch and cradled
hands stop
time.
-For Albert Bennett
written about 1993
Published in the broadsheet View from the Second Floor
brief salvage 