POLYSEMY Online ©2006

Chemo

"He's feeling his mortality,"
My mother said over the line.
I wonder, what texture it could be?

Does he reach out his hand
To finger the shimmer of a wedding veil,
Or hold his hand out flat

To let the summer breeze push sun
Thinned muslin against it?
Will his sweaty palm leave

A forever handprint like the one
My father left on the thigh of my mother's
New black velvet skirt, before I was born?

Does he clutch tightly,
Bury his fingers in red chenille
Feeling only the tension in his hand?

Maybe his fingers are spread wide,
Like my baby's, as she reaches,
Too slowly, for the cat as he purrs

Past, feeling only the cool silk tail
Slip under her grasp,
Instead of warm plush fur.

* * * * *

Smell & Memory

Dogwood blossoms never do in vases:
in life, their flat faces turned heavenward on
sparse knuckled branches—
indoors, cut, they fall out of arrangement.

So garland them, like a crown,
round my head when you bury me.
And if my hair is white
to match my skin in pale death,
adorn me in a pink variety.

But lay me under a lilac
blooming in the early spring,
never satisfied by one life:
roots reaching out to push up new
shoots until there will be a forest
covering my grave.
I will not rise again. Still,

sweet scented lilac
wafts wide on the breeze,
so you will remember me.

~ Britt Kaufmann says, "I prefer to consider myself a poet or writer. And now more than ever in my life, I feel myself fitting that definition. While my publications are still few, I am setting writing goals and meeting them." You can find her at her homepage.