Member Poem

A spotlight shines, center stage,
on the dozen or more white folding chairs
arranged in symmetry, waiting for mourners.

In the foreground, facing a screen
between the seats, is the silhouette
of a wheel chair where an old man sits

bent from the weight of 98 years.
He has already buried a wife,
the rose of his life, and now faces

the visage of a young man
framed on the screen upstage.
The face looks out, smiles

through the tight shaft of light,
the yearbook facsimile,
previewing the life of an accomplished man

now another casuality of cancer.
The two men, frozen in time and framed
in the lens: the one who remains

strains against age and gravity, lifts
a weary arm to wave a final farewell
to his son.