LILIAN

Sitting in the red leather chair I recently inherited from my father reminds me of another time of mourning and a poem I wrote when the chair sat in my old family home instead of in my Spanish village house. I am often surprised when rediscovering poems written years ago and half-forgotten. The process of writing is long gone but the words reawaken the emotion of that time. I suspect I am not alone in wishing that our lost loves could flick a switch and say hello.

                                       

ARE YOU THERE?

                                       

Unusually, I sat alone,
curled tight in her red leather chair,
dad rattling lost, brother elsewhere,
in the kitchen maybe, hiding sadness,
making more interminable tea
that failed to fill cracked, leaking souls.

I stared at her in blank distress,
blurred image posed a lifetime hence,
entranced by her winsome air,
Galway eyes, shyest of smiles,
teenage bloom, framed with
wave upon wave of peat black hair.

And whilst I gazed she came to me,
my mourned mother
answering a silent prayer
clicked her angled reading light,
flooding me with sudden flare
on off, on off, on off.

The first looked up at burning glare,
the second felt thrill creep my sceptic skin,
the third whispered, 'Mum, are you there?'
She smiled, she does still.
An Irish Mona Lisa captured in
the blink of a camera’s complicit eye. 

© 2017 Jacqueline Claire Knight.  All rights reserved.