November’s golden leaves evoke memories of families gathered around tables overflowing with traditional foods, stories long forgotten, and laughter echoing across the years. Here’s a poem I wrote, one of remembering a moment long ago that has never faded from my mind.

Madonna and Child: Oil on Wood Panel by Mary Lynn Bracht

I forgot until she did it

My mother reached up and stroked the Virgin’s face

Is this real, she asked, turning to look at me over her shoulder

My eyes couldn’t meet hers, instead

I stared at her fingertips, still pressed against the painting

And wondered what it felt like to touch history

Four hundred years ago in the jungles of Central America

Madonna and child gazed down at the pagan natives

With their Catholic eyes gilded in gold

I wanted to ask her if the holy family felt warm or cold

Greasy or dry, what did touching them make my mother feel?

But then I wondered what she meant by Is this real?

Did she mean the painting

Or the Virgin’s story?

And then I remembered

I had the same urge when I was young, to touch

What was forbidden, at sixteen

My own fingertips grazed the toes

Of Zeus, standing in silence in the Louvre

The cold marble was smooth

An electric spark shocked through my skin

When a boy caught me, and grinned

So when I finally met my mother’s eyes, I did the same

She had crossed centuries with one forbidden touch

©Mary Lynn Bracht

I came across this old book of poems on my father’s bookshelf today. It was one of his college texts, and I’d often leaf through it when I was a girl, paying close attention to the poems he marked up in pencil. My favorite back then was Trees by Joyce Kilmer (‘I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree…’), but tonight this one stood out instead. Especially the final lines: ‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.’

For 2018, may we all become our own masters and captains.

The animated skies above Lake Windermere doubtless inspired lesser poets than Wordsworth, their prose just as romantic and picturesque. I imagine a young poet gazing up at billious clouds burdened with snowflakes and the words spring forth in his mind, a ready poem to share with the world. But like so many youth inspired by greatness, he questions the worth of the words he scrawls and their originality, too. Has he made something worthwhile, something to remember? He recites his favorite line aloud as a cold shadow passes over him,

“Hung o’er a cloud, above the steep that rears, its edge all aflame, the broadening sun appears; a long blue bar it’s aegis orb divides, and breaks the spreading of its golden tides; and now it touches on the purple steep, that flings his shadow on the pictured deep.”

and he lets his own lines float away on the gentle waves lapping against the shore. 

Ruminations

The north wind blows through February trees

starlings take flight in the faded London sky

black shadows ebb and flow

murmurations mirroring my thoughts

Stop worrying it’ll drive you crazy

he likes to tell the future

it makes him feel divine

his words dig deep—roots that take hold

How will I know when it happens         

he doesn’t hear me above the wind

it whips against my cheeks

When it happens how will I know

he shakes his head

Panic! I want to grab his throat with clawed hands

a crooked branch twists round my legs

he catches me with a ruthless grip

jaundiced leaves lie unsettled

like a thousand broken hearts scattered at my feet

Does the silver birch mourn

I need to know

the answer hangs between us

he snaps the offending branch in two

I’m free

a fleeting thought

he pulls up my collar stiff against the wind

I can do it myself

rough wool scratches my neck

a banshee’s wail races the wind

invisible fingers that tangle my hair

How long is forever

starlings swarm in the winter sky

inkblot algorithms that endlessly transform

the swirling ciphers hold encrypted answers

Is it happening now

I chew the words over and over again like cud

Everything is happening now

his voice

a gentle push towards an idling van

(M. Bracht, 2015)

Tourists in London

People whirl in a time lapsed blur

Below gilded spires and ancient brick

Along the banks of the blackened Thames

Faces framed in photographic light

A thousand selfies shine in the ether

But none as bright as the white moon

A pinhole pierced through the evening blue