Pictures Assembled From Memory

"The Girl on the Steps" won 1st place in the 2023 Poetic Visons contest.


The Girl on the Steps 

Imagine all the parts of a life that revelove around an old clapboard house, 
set on bricks, 
featuring a glass door that opens onto stone steps. 

Think of how the earth travels around the sun will throw different shadows onto the sides of the house. 
All those momewnts add up to a lifetime. 

Then there is the glass door, 
reflecting generations new and old.
Moments noticed and unnoticed, 
stories whose words are written into the smile of a young girl, 
dressed for summer, 
standing on the stone steps. 

The smiling girl,
braided hair, 
back to the glass door.
Those inside, looking out. 
SHe is confident in the future and fully connected to her past. 

(glass door, looking forward, and still able to see behind her.) 

She is out in the world, 
readt ro rake the stone steps down, 
into the beyond, 
knowing that she will always be welcome back to where she came from. 

Those steps are the genesis of all that has been and all that is to come. 

T. S. Deary 
January 2023