She was a barn find,
her figure painted on the bare cedar plank wall
below a fanlight.
The sun over decades had turned her into a phantom,
a patina parboiled into the timbers.
Her painted colors now flecks in the mottle.
She was once a farmer’s daughter,
or an old love recreated, etched by light
and deepened by shadows into imperceptibility.
Her history is sun-washed away.
Her bonnet and long dress of an age
now hung upon times façade.
I wanted to own her, keep her
as someone else’s memory maybe.
There was no way of course,
old barn finds are out of time,
far from any of the rushing day’s we inhabit.
This treasure was buried too deep
to take to any home, it had become priceless
the way a great mature oak tree is beyond price
until the charming engines of nature
claim it for their own.
Categories:
imperceptibility, poetry,
Form: Free verse
She moves through living rooms invisibility
It takes more than a shadow to be alive
Imperceptibility is a frame of mind to open eyes
A pulse is harder to find at night
Even if you are naked on the staircase frightened
Nothing to fear with darkness looking back
Nothing is there not seen before
My unknown love is pure translucence
A cloud of white dancing on thin air
In a fog she tries desperately to hug
But passes through the wall unlucky
Falls for someone on the other side
Not to the other side of life, where
Like others of her kind find passage
Wind moving through dead leaves brings her alive
Outside along the haunted house waves crash alone
Only sand, sea, and rocks are solid as perceived
Seem vacant, empty of life in the absence of light
As is my love, a phantom angel, stranger never seen
My spirit completes and comforts me at 3:00 am
I don't even know her name or mine this time of evening
Categories:
imperceptibility, absence, adventure, fantasy, identity,
Form: Free verse