November 2018
While my three children were young, I wrote just enough poetry to give me an inkling that I might have an aptitude for it, but I wasn’t brave enough to throw my earning potential aside until my family was grown and I’d worked for a number of years. As time went on, I came to regret not having devoted myself to writing much earlier in life. The “now or never” decision came about 20 years ago—my late-in-life career—and the process of creating a poem still gives me enormous satisfaction. I’m gratified that my poetry is widely published in the small press and equally gratified by becoming part of a larger community of writers.
The Persistence of Memory
—from the painting by Dali
This is no landscape for humans:
the foreground ocherous or black,
a cheerless sky, the hanging tree—
and time beginning its slow descent,
dragging me, unwilling, into that airless
vortex. I feel myself shrinking
like Alice, the world rushing away
from my ears, my voice subsiding
to a whisper. Before you know it
I may disappear altogether.
Eat me, drink me, you command,
as if the barren hours can resolve
shadows hardening inexorably
behind a sheeted glass. Yet
I could do this once—for you
my heart would flare like an orchid,
a pomegranate, a red sun.
I have felt the viburnum whitening,
fragrant as a bridegroom, pillow
to your sweet soul ascending.
© 2018 Linda M. Fischer
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