The eighth day
Of the twelfth month
Is my
Barbara Day
The day
When I light candles
For you
Who is and was
My sister
Celebrate would we
If I not here
And you still there
If we still lived our lives.
But death came
And nothing stayed
The same, except
My Barbara day
On the eighth day
Of the twelfth month
Of each year
When I light a candle
Just for you
This day is yours.
Even if your mandolin
Has long since broken.
This is your day.
We light a candle in your name.
Put Barbara twigs into our vases.
Your day’s today.
This advent day,
We celebrate and
Set your place at our table.
Bake a cake in your name.
This is a day in advent, that
Does not speak of a coming,
But of a having gone, of broken
Links, unbearable hurt.
This is my Barbara day,
Each year
Which sometimes
Makes me
Wonder
If…
stone on
her grave – I
never saw it.
just the flaming
burial roses
home, no place.
she was mine.
clarity only
in the
empty house
built by father
brick on brick
filled with mother’s
life and
loneliness
home no more
childhood comfort -
tasty no longer
nor filling the hole
in my heart
© beatrixbrockman 6.12.2022
mother you were
not just mine
but that of all
who sought refuge
with our family.
always open
were your arms,
your heart always
giving, always thinking
of others, of their joy—
always ready to carry,
to uplift
and to love.
love — she was
your shield, your being.
love — she was you.
© beatrix brockman (2022)
Like twins
Whose cells never
Separated in the womb
So conjoined are
These virus days
Endlessly strung
In the back and
The forth. Last January
Unreal memory
Of what we did
Were allowed to do
The future, then
Clear before us
Evaporated by now
Between isolation
And masks
You ask
What will be.
sepia
in photography
you’re still alive,
one young and wiry,
beautiful, the other
her long hair coiffed,
bouffant above the brows
in sepia forever frozen
both the soprano
and the baritone.
past your frames
my path leads every day
but rarely do I focus
on the woman or the man
my parents captured
too in kodak-color.
so loving was your voice
so rare on paper, too afraid
that seven years
of schooling only
might yield mockery
how precious now
the cursive speaks
to the “little one, beloved
and so far away”
whose heart crossed
oceans every day.
and so I linger and reflect
head bent over words
– more valuable to me
than gold – and stand before
your pictures that once
will perish until nothing
shall remain of us.
© beatrix brockman
