A Woman from the Past, by David B. Prather

Young Woman in the Garden, by Edouard Manet (France) 1882

​A Woman from the Past
  
There are days you feel
no more than scribbled upon the world.
 
Maybe this is one of those days.
 
Around you, even trees and grasses
and patches of earth blur
 
with smear and smudge. And maybe today,
 
but just today, you become a woman
from the past in a long blue dress,
 
a modest dress.
 
There’s a jaunty, yellow hat upon your gold-
brown curls. You are disappearing

bit by bit, starting with your hands,
 
which keeps you from reaching out, 
keeps you from the apples,
 
or peaches, or plums, or pears—anything
 
in season. You stand motionless
in afternoon sunlight, morning
 
sunlight, the middle of the day
 
when time is a fickle thing
that makes all our edges indistinct.
 
Your gaze is transfixed where no one else can see,
 
a look of despair, or longing
or even that quiet drift of thoughtlessness.
 
And even though I have no way to prove it,
 
I’m going to assume a flash of blue feathers
in the distance, and all that’s left are twigs
 
and leaves twitching after what they’ve lost.
 
David B. Prather
​
David B. Prather still lives a life of Sunday dinners and lawn mowing in Parkersburg, WV. He is the author of three poetry collections: We Were Birds (Main Street Rag, 2019), Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2023), and the forthcoming Bending Light with Bare Hands (Fernwood Press, 2024).