Day 11 - 2.6.13

Prompt for: February 6, 2013
Subject or Theme: Last line ends: memories fade
Word(s) to Include: fidget(ed/s/y)
Forbidden Word(s): back, look(ed/ing/s), remember(ed/ing/s)
Additional Parameters: Minimum 16 lines.


Seventeen Years Gone Today


A yellow rose from some fifty years ago lies pressed
between the brittle pages of a volume of poetry -
Lovers' Infiniteness* by John Donne
is the passage marked,
discolored now by leeched
rose petal juices. Words unreadable,
but unnecessary, for they are
etched into the binding of his soul.

His finger, leathery, scarred,
has traced those lines
innumerable times, more now
that she is gone. Yet
in the whispered recitation,
he once again can see
her eyes; greenly green
of new spring shoots of wheat,
her lips spread in that smile
she reserved only for him,
her small hands, arthritic later on,
but strong when kneading dough
or gentle with her hollyhocks
twining up the rail on the front porch.

He gave Sarah the book of verse
on their wedding day, knowing
she loved that sort of thing,
read her the poem, knowing
she'd smile and say he'd gotten
the beat all wrong. She'd
done exactly that, then pulled the
yellow rose, her favorite color,
from her bouquet and pressed it there.

Fine lines cross-cross the faded rose,
now somewhere between beige and grey,
but he
sees Sunday mornin' yellow
and his Sarah when he reads her poem.
He sits in her rocker on the porch,
absentmindedly fidgeting
with hand sewn spine of the book
while he recites a litany
of moments gathered:
a Canon of Sarah.
Unlike the blanched skeleton of the rose,
he will not let the memories fade.




*http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/infiniteness.php