They walk the streets as if aliens
Immersed and blinded in light, tired
Ghosts with only sunglasses on
To make them human and children
Huddled and body-slammed
Against ice-cream shop windows
Like fruit hanging and swollen
Full of sunlight and summer thirst.
Every step feels like birth, a womb
Bloated with hot air, even birds are
Too lazy to chatter as they inch
Backwards into bushes and dark shadows,
Yet, flowers praise the day and with open
Arms glow and burst in reds and yellows,
A chorus of color that shake as cars pass by
And it is hard to not remember when my father
Lay in a darkened room in August when
The sun fulfilled its summer destiny as he
Wilted away into a familiar silence, skin
Absent of color, unable to talk, eyes empty
But like this day, an eerie silence filled his bed.
It is too sad that father could not feel the hope
Of color bursting, the calmness of silence
And the joy of flowers in prayer.
He simply turned to one side,
And slowly gasped
Then breathed out,
Not unlike flowers at season’s end.
Steven Pelcman is a poet and novelist who has been published in magazines such as The Baltimore Review, The New Orleans Review etc. and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize 4X. He lived and worked in academia in Germany, consulted for corporations such as Siemens but presently resides in Florida.
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