To My Mother Lou Alice – I know it’s hard to go thru the desert—but know that God is holding your hand and I am holding you in my heart. I love you—and ache for you – your daughter No. III Priscilla IV
Inscription on the flyleaf of “Streams in the Desert – Mrs Charles Cowman“
Ever since you announced it quietly and so matter of fact my words failed, unspoken. We'd always talked openly, often even as a teen, withdrawn and moody with tears and tantrums too. I still treasure them all. Your faith though was a small but silent barrier. I never could cross to make that leap, so incongruous. And so, with this book, I'm trying to speak a language for the dying to help break bonds of blood to say "adios ~ go with God" ii Good things come in threes and you dear daughter are one of these. Truly divine, this gifted book, felicitous both title and theme. Death is a wilderness alien, unknown, and one we all traverse alone. Days, though, are fast trotting past sore as a camel ride, a seasick sojourn on that desert ship. And when comes time to dismount, to cross the plain I'll go how only the wind can take me (am praying for a spirit guide to show me) Just now I treasure every moment we have left to be. iii Till now I've put off ditching her belongings for years the attic room gave space enough to store dispensing with the need to closely sort and pare the owner's wheat from tares. How readily these parables became my daily usage with fragile faith I've kept reliquaries enshrined some valuables amongst the knickknacks letter piles besides those bygone books. Slight foxing now appears throughout their pages here's my inscription, still legible in ink. I've not written anything since but still we speak- in whispered messages.
For my MTB: Critique and Craft prompt: “On the Flyleaf” we are to pick ONE from a given list of actual book inscriptions, as theme for this poem. An additional option is to compose it with different voices.
PoetryPix 