Leah.

Leah.

(For my sister, Jean)

             First published at Peacock Journal.

I think of you, Leah,

your young self standing 

against tempests in calm control,

your artist eye filled with dreams

of children in golden forests,

sun dance of poppies,

moon floating high

into the velvet night,

foam ripple of waves 

washing white sand.

I think of you, Leah,

leaf-fragile, partial, secretive,

how you inch in your walker, 

flop in front of the screen’s 

mind-numbing monotony,

dream of painting again,

linger over photographs,

shuffle the years 

and that deceiver, memory,

into forms that make you happy.

Leah, is it comfort

that the gathering tide 

flowed over you, swept you 

out into the deep calm 

where the great swells gather,

far beyond the tears of the living

trapped in this tumult,

this ebb and flow of waves 

that pound upon the sand

and suck back relentlessly

into the ceaseless sea?