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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 |