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San Clemente Journal

Caddy by Laurie Patton

Dec 04, 2019 03:48PM ● By Don Kindred

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 Caddy by Laurie Patton


It was the summer of hope.

We sat on the porch

in the twilight breeze,

honeysuckle seeping into

our pores, seducing our senses,

father reciting chronicles

of antique lives.

Lights appeared in houses

around the square,

cascading out of doors open

to the cooling honeysuckle breeze;

we sat in the hasting dark.

 

Through the tiny holes of the

screen doors there was life,

and distantly a barking dog,

a brittle interrupted cry,

clinking of Sunday-supper china.

The clock in the square struck slowly,

resonantly, through the swirling,

lightborne motes of life.

The sounds and scents of summer

assured you that you were not alone.

 

We sat on the porch, listening the father,

Quentin rapt, his face watching

the bright soft words flowing

and the soft cool breezes and

I loved him, understood him,

who lived in the shadows of pre-memory

as he sat in the shadows of the porch

in the summer when there was,

seemed to be, still hope.

Because the next summer Quentin was dead.

 

He could not keep the illusion,

who had only ever lived as an illusion.

Like that summer, pristine in its still,

calm surface and secret surges,

and its hope the sterile delivery room

mysteries of blood,

birthing not life but nonentity,

furiously flickering celluloid frames;

phantoms shrieking silent mouthed

with indomitable anger at their own illusion.

And how I alone,

within that soundless fury.