End Of the Pier
Precious Beyond Words
Is the Love Of Our Children
End of the Pier
* * * * * *
Beautiful son, dreamer
of dreams, creator of laughter and
sparkling eyes, you wrapped your lifetime
in a ball of light and fell slowly past my tender sight
~ ~ ~
Travis Andrew, dying like a roaring sunset over
a summer ocean I watched you glow your
last fall colors, and fade as quietly as
a shadow at dusk. In those last
four months your life condensed,
entire, complete; your eight years shone out
as an oil lamp on a winter evening soft and sweet
~ ~ ~
Those last hundred nights we knew together the
cold hiss of oxygen, the abrupt clamor of machinery, and my
hand stroking the warmth of your velvet forehead while I memorized
your dark long-lashed, wearied eyes, as you neared the port,
struggling through a lifetime career of drawing each
breath toward the end of the pier
of a childhood cut
short.
(C) 1999 Rosemary J. Gwaltney Poem and Photographs All rights reserved.
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