July 2019
Note: This poem was written as a tribute to my late mother, Alice E. Lighter, who passed away in 1974. She was a perfectly splendid woman with many gifts, some of which are referred to below. Please note that the poem was selected as a finalist in the 2018 Lascaux Anthology competition.
If, in October
I should be driving past a row
of brick-and-shingle bungalows
when maple leaves are sticking to the sidewalk
and a rain-glossed school bus starts to swing
its yellow bulk around the corner,
there you are again—framed in a wavy
leaded window, watering a long-fingered
philodendron while the Victrola
clatters out Landowska’s version of
the Little Preludes through the glass
and I am nine years old —and you,
the center of my small universe,
are the love of my life, to whose powdered
presence I come home blissfully,
day after dangerous day
utterly innocent of a distant time
when you will turn from me
and withdraw into my archive of losses.
Even your quaint name, Alice, melts
to nearly nothing on my tongue.
© 2019 Marilyn L. Taylor
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