Saying Farewell to Father from Inside a Train Car
Darren Nordlie
In a navy blue and canary yellow trimmed train car
stands a nine year old girl with hair the color of cocoa
she used to sip with her father indoors from winter winds.
One hand holds a cell phone to ear,
the other presses hard on a cold glass window,
to try and feel the touch of father’s palm,
the palm which picked her by the hand when
she fell off her blue bike with yellow
streamers and sunflower-shaped bell on Odesa streets.
This and a flood of memories
pour tears out of her Black Sea eyes,
black as the charcoal streets which
father must return to with a rifle he has never
held instead of holding her.
She fights fears of black body bags and father
being in one of them as she stares into his
weathered fisherman eyes, and cries in her phone
“I love you papa!”
“Chase the bad men away!”
“Let’s ride our bikes when you come home!”, when
yellow streamers blow freely in Black Sea breeze
carrying chimes from sunflower-shaped bike bells
to fishing vessels floating above sunken warships.
stands a nine year old girl with hair the color of cocoa
she used to sip with her father indoors from winter winds.
One hand holds a cell phone to ear,
the other presses hard on a cold glass window,
to try and feel the touch of father’s palm,
the palm which picked her by the hand when
she fell off her blue bike with yellow
streamers and sunflower-shaped bell on Odesa streets.
This and a flood of memories
pour tears out of her Black Sea eyes,
black as the charcoal streets which
father must return to with a rifle he has never
held instead of holding her.
She fights fears of black body bags and father
being in one of them as she stares into his
weathered fisherman eyes, and cries in her phone
“I love you papa!”
“Chase the bad men away!”
“Let’s ride our bikes when you come home!”, when
yellow streamers blow freely in Black Sea breeze
carrying chimes from sunflower-shaped bike bells
to fishing vessels floating above sunken warships.
|
Darren Nordlie is the 2022 1st place winner in Poetry for EPIC Group Writers and has been published twice on the Washington State Poet Laureate’s website. He serves as vice president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword (RASP) and writes to self-express, and to make audiences feel or think differently.
|
