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)
zumpoems 