A Poem a Day (290): Only breath

 

Dedicated to my mother, who passed away in August.

Only breath

 

I watch you fade out,

without words,

without action.

I fail to ask questions.

I fail to hold your hand

before it grows cold.

I watch you fade out,

stunned earth,

in a silence beyond silence.

 

A tranquil space

without any context

or walls;

we exist apart,

there is nothing else.

There is only breath.

I see you out

as you saw me in.

 

I see your face sometimes

half-sleeping, half-there,

and in my half-imagination

you kiss me goodbye,

and I am the child again.

 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 31, 2020

 

A Poem a Day (289): Fins

 

Fins

These days we walk on air,

translucent drifts of white proposition,

suspended in our numb isolation,

view the world from distanced heights,

ourselves full-drawn upwards.

Here we stand with our resolutions

like kings surveying territory,

but covert neither greed nor power,

mere spectators as we are,

waiting for life to recover life.

If fish could swim through the skies

we could reach out and touch fins.

 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 30, 2020

A Poem a Day (288): I could make a cake

 

I could make a cake

 

I could make a cake

and call it by your name,

smother it with candied cream,

an assembly of plastic candles.

 

I could choose not to blow

them out on a rush of déjà vu.

Trace a finger all around,

edges of thick-set chocolate.

 

Taste it. It all thickens now.

You can’t waste what you eat

and you can’t take it with you.

Sweetness might not last.

 

I’ll hand you the knife

to make the deepest cut.

Old memories seep on doubt,

bitter-sweet icing for the cake.

 

A day of gathered memories,

no longer rationed out.

Cameras clicked to preserve it all

as if night could wipe us out.

 

 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 29, 2020