by Joan Godfrey
Zone Five
The snapshot. Black and white
specimen of the nuclear family
pinned against a sky
of middle gray.Daddy
squats,
holding his perfect
baby boy, arms and legs bivalves
cradling precious pearl.Me. Barely two.
Eyes already filled with
half-formed questions,
arms swaddling soft girl's
belly.Mama
stands
behind me, hands on my shoulders
pressing down
as she lifts her face
skyward
in frozen laughter.
Impasse
I tell myself how
foolish I am, that I must
keep my silence...
When I was wearing
love beads, working
my way through theKama Sutra,
he was a boy
with innocent eyes
pedaling towardmanhood.
Yet I am vernal
in his presence,
absolved by thebenediction
of his impersonal
smile --fighting
my September
fantasies which
beckon in a voice as sweet
as babies laughing
in their sleep.
Far Away Things
"You have to be careful,
walking on rainbows, " he said.I agreed.
(One does not argue with the logic
of a three-year-old devotee
of the sky.) But I told myselfImpossible.
The air would be much
too thin
to breathe without an oxygen mask.
And how would you get there,
free-fall from an airplane
only to wind up pastel splattered
on the ground?Besides,
a rainbow is illusion,
an insubstantial gossamer
maybe; one of those
far away things
that seems real
until you go the distance...sort of like love.
Still,
I kept my silence:
I have not seen a rainbow
in a long,
long time.
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