To All Of Those Who Made Me Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

Everything blooms in the mirror,
in stillwater eyes and cornsilk hair,
in the lamplight before the twilight
when all is asleep and unaware.
The past unfolds like origami,
like old love letters in roses bloom.
In black velvet deep, secrets to keep
tangle in tendrils, in skin, in room.

Phantom voices whisper of regret,
of sorrows born and dreams unfulfilled,
of a silent hell never to well,
and knuckled prayers by night now stilled.
Moth mother burned by too many flames
seeking the taste of forbidden fruit.
She dragged her pain behind smiles in vain.
Her empty hands begging, resolute.

Fallow father, golden leaf floating,
ever present in fountain of youth.
He was a shield on the battlefield,
a dissolution, a death in truth.
A regal remnant peering through mist,
he watched over the family tree;
and as I look, I too see him look.
He looks outward and onward through me.

Songbird sisters, a magpie and crow,
pleating the wind on a slant of sky
chasing their dreams on magic moonbeams
looking downward with their heads held high.
A chorus of birds lifts them in song.
The sun burns quickly into a smolder.
I close my eyes and soar through the skies.
In a blink, we are so much older.

Wine that was poured and pressed into me,
the sour grapes of lovers now past,
through thick and thin, they live in my skin,
a patchwork quilt unraveling fast.
All of these faces hang on the wall
down the hallway in back of my mind,
and I truly care for what is there
for what is near yet so far behind.

The one who loves me smiles when I smile.
He flirts with the wind and time and space.
He loves the lush of salient hush
and is the gusto to all my grace.
He is ruggedly rough and handsome
with the earth in the palm of his hands.
He is an offering, a blessing,
and a comfort to all life demands.

A Clay Street girl and a Church Street girl,
I am a woman of Sunnymeade.
A sappy thing, I cry when I sing.
I am a human; and yes, I bleed.
Everything blooms in the mirror.
All things return to where they should be.
Let everything fall, tears and all,
to weep for all of those who made me.