Cycles

Cycles by Michael R. Burch I see his eyes caress my daughter's breasts through her thin cotton dress, and how an indiscreet strap of her white bra holds his bald fingers in fumbling mammalian awe... And I remember long cycles into the bruised dusk of a distant park, hot blushes, wild, disembodied rushes of blood, portentous intrusions of lips, tongues and fingers... and now in him the memory of me lingers like something thought rancid, proved rotten. I see Another again?hard, staring, and silent? though long-ago forgotten... And I remember conjectures of panty lines, brief flashes of white down bleacher stairs, coarse patches of hair glimpsed in bathroom mirrors, all the odd, questioning stares... Yes, I remember it all now, and I shoo them away, willing them not to play too long or too hard in the back yard? with a long, ineffectual stare that years from now, he may suddenly remember. Photographs by Michael R. Burch Here are the effects of a life and they might tell us a tale (if only we had time to listen) of how each imperiled tear would glisten, remembered as brightness in her eyes, and how each dawn’s dramatic skies could never match such pale azure. Like dreams of her, these ghosts endure and they tell us a tale of impatient glory . . . till a line appears—a trace of worry?— or the wayward track of a wandering smile which even now can charm, beguile? We might find good cause to wonder as we see her pause (to frown?, to ponder?): what vexed her in her loveliness . . . what weight, what crushing heaviness turned her auburn hair a frazzled gray, and stole her youth before her day? We might ask ourselves: did Time devour the passion with the ravaged flower? But here and there a smile will bloom to light the leaden, shadowed gloom that always seems to linger near . . . And here we find a single tear: it shimmers like translucent dew and tells us Anguish touched her too, and did not spare her for her hair's burnt copper, or her eyes' soft hue. Published in Tucumcari Literary Review (the first poem in its issue) Keywords/Tags: youth, puberty, teen, teenage, teenagers, teen love, sex, sexy, lust, desire, date, father, daughter, chastity, virginity, abstinence, hormones, photograph, photographs, effects, ghosts, phantoms, time