Prompt for: February 6, 2013 Subject or Theme: Last line ends: memories fade Word(s) to Include: fidget(ed/s/y) Forbidden Word(s): back, look(ed/ing/s), remember(ed/ing/s) Additional Parameters: Minimum 16 lines. Seventeen Years Gone Today A yellow rose from some fifty years ago lies pressed between the brittle pages of a volume of poetry - Lovers' Infiniteness* by John Donne is the passage marked, discolored now by leeched rose petal juices. Words unreadable, but unnecessary, for they are etched into the binding of his soul. His finger, leathery, scarred, has traced those lines innumerable times, more now that she is gone. Yet in the whispered recitation, he once again can see her eyes; greenly green of new spring shoots of wheat, her lips spread in that smile she reserved only for him, her small hands, arthritic later on, but strong when kneading dough or gentle with her hollyhocks twining up the rail on the front porch. He gave Sarah the book of verse on their wedding day, knowing she loved that sort of thing, read her the poem, knowing she'd smile and say he'd gotten the beat all wrong. She'd done exactly that, then pulled the yellow rose, her favorite color, from her bouquet and pressed it there. Fine lines cross-cross the faded rose, now somewhere between beige and grey, but he sees Sunday mornin' yellow and his Sarah when he reads her poem. He sits in her rocker on the porch, absentmindedly fidgeting with hand sewn spine of the book while he recites a litany of moments gathered: a Canon of Sarah. Unlike the blanched skeleton of the rose, he will not let the memories fade. *http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/infiniteness.php |