A Still Life

 

                         I seem to stare through transoms

                         Through half opened doors.

                         Behind these doors I sense a presence,

                         Two shadows move in the twilight

                         Just barely out of my vision.

                         They move in a dream slowly,

                         Still life pantomime across a lawn

                         Voices whisper through opened windows

                         To sound of sirens and flashing lights.

 

                         She kneels in prayer

                         Before her crewel embroidered garden,

                         He hovers in the foreground

                         Bushy eyebrows and a pasted smile

                         Woven into a tapestry frozen in time,

                         Canvas is a silk screen landscape

                         On a moonlit night,

                         The bay is calm and the breezes mild.

 

                         House lies vacant in its stare,

                         Sightless windows shutters gone

                         Throw their shadows on the street.

                         Vegetation swirls in an autumn mural,

                         Where once was pride in the faded garden.

                         Somewhere in another country

                         The latest General has again been ousted.

                         The seasons have come and gone.

 

                                                           Jack Mashman

                                                           1981