zumpoems

                                            
Silver Alert

Steel ballerina

Under golden dome

On ornate, jewelled throne

Sur le cou-de-pied pirouette

Arythmically composing frozen, forlorn silhouettes

Upon my irregular recall

Lost opportunities overshadowed by lost capabilities

Lost love obscured by lost loved ones

Left alone for a moment, she sees him getting into the last of the county’s ‘eighty-five Impalas.

He turns the key: ignites, grinds, reverses and is gone from the driveway with questionable hearing, eyesight and purpose.

I ride the road; I hide in the highway; I engage the interstate and soon catch the journey on display:

….. Silver Alert, Gray Chevy Impala, 3AUY86G …..

G is for gone.  I am gone.  I have always targeted gone. Gone has always targeted me.

She speaks, but so softly.  I get the idea.  Her words are hers alone — always have been: they never will be mine.

I cry inside, tears wreaking havoc on my kidneys, gall bladder, and parts of the spleen. There are other useful internal parts, but I dare not now look: the eyes and hands are positioned ten, two; the right side desperately stealing towards four.

I wait.  I wait in motion. I cannot do otherwise.  In a moment is all the truth of a bruised, bubbling, underwater universe: one of many, many of one.

She, or her likeness, somehow, is there, hanging from the mirror.

It’s just a symbol:

An item with mass,

An item of meaning,

And, now, an item of mobility.

— zumwalt (2015)