Photo by Josep Molina Secall on Unsplash
For Carole
I.
Fingers
shake
like whipped
wind.
Hands don’t
work.
Lift a glass
of water.
Falls
on the
floor.
I’m
a broken
elevator.
Staircase without
stairs.
Cannot
play
violin. Strings
disappear.
II.
Women’s
crooked legs,
broken
puppets.
Contorted
mouths. Fingers,
bent
icicles.
The women,
compassionate
as nurses
on a cancer
ward.
Understanding
as a dying
patient.
Still
as a bird’s
broken
wing.
III.
Who
am I
if I cannot
paint?
Cannot recognize
colors?
An artist
erased,
clam without
a shell,
closed
sky.
IV.
Prayers
are what
I have
now
and forest’s beams
surrounding
light.
Pamela Stone Singer has been a poet/teacher with California Poets in the Schools for more than two decades, a coach for Poetry Out Loud, and a humane educator. In 2012 she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and in 2014 to be Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, California.