|
Flash
It was your eyesthat held one to the frame on your mother's desk, the blue flame of two-year-old and those lashes, how they were noticed first. Your mother protested, wanted those who gazed at your being to look beyond a future Paul Newman, the looker you would become. But as they say, the eyes are windows to the soul, so we raised the glass and climbed through, watched you grow, how you ran around and around the synagogue Friday nights—energy—someone from the dessert table said, pure energy, just as the rabbi said at the funeral, how you were light and a star can only be seen in night sky, a boy with his jar of flickering bugs turned man, "Mister" in the newspaper which reported the accident, on your way, where they were building that bridge between boy and man, the construction site along cornfields, the confusion of becoming, how hammers and nails must have lain about, bulldozers and backhoes, how in the night it was hard to see and so much we don't know, how those eyes will flash at me from the frame of memory, you a lightning bug above July fields, a burst to us all, how you lit our eyes. Deborah Moreno 7/21/04 (Debbie was a student of Penny's at Knox, and also knew Jeremy again through Temple Sholom when she moved back to Galesburg with her family.) |