End of a Line

The grandfather clock’s
ponderous ticking trails me past
the photograph-lined hall,
memorial to mother and father,
their mothers and fathers
and theirs before them,
and so on.

And so on, sepia-stained and
scalloped-edged tangibilities.

Zoom to present tense:
mom up to her elbows
in flour, picking gardenias from
her verdant bed, clad
in wedding white, holding
an infant, squalling pink-cheeked.

Me, ten years past her passing,
crying unseen tears, draped
in baby-blue satin,
carnation corsage tickling
my virginal neck, mortarboards
and sheepskins portending
my future more
than the hand held,
my once-love.

Through the wood-stove’s
crackle and hiss, daddy snores
under his gold-spun afghan,
reliable as time, and so on,
the hallway wall, austere eyes frozen,
snapshots of a history, all
funnel down to a single entity,
an end product.
A deliverable.

Yet here am I,
no more or less
than myself.


***

Prompt: end of the line

The inspiration for this poem came from the introspections of Phoebe, one of my characters in my novels.

Two more days of poetry.

Peace, Linda