SPINNING BLUE CIRCLE
In memory of my mother
A craving for meaning bled from your eyes,
but the zero and one of life and death
were temporarily stuck in between.
At the sour grey end of this afternoon
you lived in a distant dimension,
holidaying on another planet
where you lost your money and passport
and waited for a lift from an angel,
a god or something in a spaceship.
Could you sense it about to arrive,
that force we cannot conceive or suspect
but which we all must get acquainted with,
a rainstorm hanging in the air that says:
I am you now, I am unknowable.
RUE MENARD
For Claudia
The machine mocks us all, the giggle
of aliens from the dark, but remember
the white plastic bag you wore as a hat
in the rain with our broken umbrella:
an AI could write that scene better, perhaps,
by searching the internet for background,
but it could never truly be there
like I was with you that autumn day
with Paris glistening and you laughing
in the rain with our broken umbrella.
Published in The Antigonish Review
S.C. Flynn 