In Elder Years, by MFrostDelaney

Lighthouse in Fog, photography by Xiaoly Li (USA) 2022. Click image for artist site.

In Elder Years

She fingers photographs and stares at them,
intent yet vague, as if she’s searching for
some once-familiar place. Her eyes implore,
Just one I can remember. But the phlegm
that darkens, clogs her mind, takes all control.
Her stare dissolves. Somewhere inside concedes,
allows her to let go.  Her memory bleeds,
she shifts up, off her bed into the hole
that grips her life — uncertainty. But then
she reaches back into the box for pics
she photographed in some past life. The mix
of foreign places, airports showing when
she traveled islands, shores, Australia once.
A speck of what she had known filters in . . .
the lighthouse trips, the stairs she climbed. A din
of waves against a rocky cliff confronts
the four walls that she lives within, the room
where out of focus scenes are all that bloom.

MFrostDelaney

MFrostDelaney is a bean counter by trade, a tree hugger in heart and a recovering soul, practicing life in New England. A member of the Powow River Poets, her poems appear regularly in Quill & Parchment, has been nominated for the Push Cart.Prize. She has contributed poetry to HerStory 2021, has poems in the Powow River Poets Anthology II and Extreme Sonnets II, and displayed a poem at New Beginnings – Poetry on Canvas, Peabody Art Association 2022