Edith A. Jenkins

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P&P Poem

Chord

A chord is a consequence.  It accosts
as if called for, as if called up,
incorporating all that has gone before.
The long apologetic arpeggio of years
hankers behind it
so that we organize memory,
record, disquiet, censor,
and our censorious selves lift
a curtain of the revealed
only to shut it down, a drama
where the actors fail, cough, exempt
themselves with forgetfulness.

I traverse memory with a large eraser
so that islands of events move
into glamorous certitude or fade into reverie,
shout their irreverence and terror,
bleed into pallor.

Chord, recording yourself, all that remains,
all that is past, all that is present.
Record, Oh record. 
 
 
 

S. Margherita Revisited after your Death

Brave at the cost of sorrow
so that stopped grief
clogs arteries, I walk
the streets of your desertion.

Curved coast, bright light
of morning, fishing boats
chugging against their leashes
in the remarkable harbor.

Profusion of greens on medieval hills,
counterpoint of colors, counterpoint
of leaves in stillness, then the temporal
in the intrusion of breeze.

I try to address their beauty:
I have no voice because you cannot hear.

Edith A. Jenkins

P&P Poem

Prevision

On what dark night on what near morning
all light will vanish all meandering stop,
the digital clock halt, the door jam shut,
the radio go silent, if and perhaps banished then with then.
she lies impenetrable --- the long nose arrogant,
the cheeks' embroidery spent, the wired mouth silent.
 

Pageant of past so dominant in life:
pleasure, a swim in the cold stream;
plunges of sorrow; faces of loved ones dead ---
parade memorial and hers alone.
Pageants of future: the unborn, kin of her kin;
errors prodigious, historic or her own---
a ravenous prognostic bird hovering above.
All disappear:  now, for the first time, prevails.

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