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Dear Girl *
Read by Heather Sullivan
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Dear Girl
I watch you trying to resurrect
my African violet,
as if you can hold on to me
by watering those dead leaves.
Dear girl, listen
to your Grandma: my spirit
is no more in that plant
than it is in the ground!
I’m like the hummingbird now—
not the replica etched on my headstone
or the figurine on your bookshelf,
but the live gal with jade wings flecked black
that hovered eye-level where you sat
that morning
on a step, mourning
my death and the death
of your marriage.
Perfect timing, considering,
a wise soul told you.
Perfect timing indeed:
See? You have my stuff
to fill your place.
Just keep it simple.
The last thing I baked
on the cookie sheet: cookies.
The last thing I made
in the bread pan: bread.
So, when your mind spins
backward, flit and sip
nectar from bloom to bloom.
Let go, dear girl. Let go
and grow
something new.
·
Heather Sullivan © 2011
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Daylight Saving *
Read by Heather Sullivan
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Daylight Savings
It is He who reveals the profound and
hidden things.
He knows what is in the darkness, and the
light dwells with Him. ~ Daniel 2:22
My father shoots his photos in the dark.
The moon, his flashbulb, tacked
to a backdrop of sky. His camera lens:
a telescope to penetrate these onyx hours.
Later, Dad brings his findings home;
like a poet, he exposes the ink sea.
Slowly, he lifts layers of darkness
from the snapshot’s surface.
until the shadows emerge in color,
until he discovers a purple blur
beneath all that night:
a lone iris lost in the reeds.
Near dawn, my father pulls this flower
from the shadows and names it Fragile Beauty.
And I think that about sums it up—
this once-hidden bloom, now here
in sharp focus—one bright yellow tongue,
one violet throat translating hope.
I ponder my father’s process—
how it would be easier to capture
images by day, but there is something
to his deliberate unveiling, his patient
uncovering,
(with eyes drenched in wonder)
that reveals his real nature.
My father, ever the teacher, unfolds
each of his children this way:
through such gentle illumination,
such quiet searching. It is a good thing
Dad’s pupils are coal-black, his irises, sepia:
to filter the light
of his blinding kindness.
·
Heather Sullivan © 2009
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