Grandmother’s Visit

By Michael Theroux

It was late, already dark, so I was quite surprised to see my grandmother so primly dressed. Slim and pretty in her two-tone yellow frock, hair all permed, her eyes sparkled as she told me she wanted to get a good start, as she had a long way to go. 

Nana rose gracefully from our dining room chair, crossed to me and gave me a big hug. She was still taller than I, at 10; as my cheek pressed into her collarbone, it occurred to me that she held me close, awfully long.

At her funeral, I placed a small poem I’d written into the space for such things in her casket; knowing she’d like it:

There’s this luminous murk
see: how far the closeness seems?
As twere the distance in a dream
where all my fears lurk …
furious, lethargic

Pick up your eyes hands face
so into new forms may we flow.
Fears are simply curb & gutter
not curtains for the show:
we flutter for a while, then go.*

I awoke, thinking it’s a shame, really, that after their passing we get to see our loved ones so very seldom.

*A longer version of this poem, ‘Flutter’, was published by Ariel Chart International Literary Journal on September 23, 2023: https://www.arielchart.com/2023/09/flutter.html

Michael Theroux writes from his home office in Northern California. His career has spanned field botanist, environmental health specialist, green energy developer and resource recovery web site editor. Many scientific and technical works have been formally and/or self-published. Entering the public-side of the creative writing field late in life, at 72, Michael is now seeking publication of his cache of art writings which may be found, or will soon be seen, in Down in the Dirt and their semi-annual collection, ‘Cast Off!’, Ariel Chart, 50WS, CafeLit, Poetry Pacific, Last Leaves, Backwards Trajectory, Small Wonders, Preservation Foundation / Storyhouse, Cerasus, The Acedian Review and the Lothlorien Poetry Journal & its Anthologies #2 and #4, and here, in Academy of the Heart and Mind.