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
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
