Category: Love

A Childhood Memory of My Father

 

for my father — a childhood memory….


Late morning silhouette:
unwelcome shadows,
purple grey subtlety
suffocate the sun
I am befuddled by the silence,
absence of laughter,
ordinary talk,
the smile on my mother’s face —

Sunday respite away from home,
a town where my father was born, we would
spend hours at Aunt Andrea’s house
until the sunset bid farewell
and the gas lamps gave light along with fireflies
and the crickets chirped on.

I was a little child less than school age
in pigtails and petticoats
wondering where my father went that day
for I longed for his strong presence
amidst this baffling purple silhouette —

I crossed the pebbled country road,
climbed up a stunted hill
to Grandma’s house and I found
my father weeping,
hunched under a native fruit tree,
mournful violin strings uncontrollable,
relentless rivulets of tears cascade
for a brother to be buried,
at height of youth,
poisoned
at a town feast the week before
a chef’s senseless blunder —

Wide brown eyes watched in wonder,
my little child’s heart cried at his distress and he
looked back and beheld his daughter,
his countenance contorted in grief softening,
and slowly the mournful music lulled
as he staggered to where I stood
and my father held my hand
and he and I chased the purple shadows out of the morning
as we walked down the hill
along with life and the sunlight.

© 2012 by D. G. Vachal, revised 2021

* photography by Аркадий Деев

Where Love Dwells

Where Love Dwells

“And Jacob served seven years for Rachel: and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.”  Genesis 29:20

Love dwells in eternal habitations,
where seasons form
as the dew from heaven
upon the grass —

In quiet abodes
where burdens are weightless
as scattered feathers
afloat
between the branches —

Where the waiting
is not waiting
and the silence is palpable
as the song
of apple blossoms.

by  D. G. Vachal © 2012

Music of Childhood



… for my mother

Music of  Childhood

Play for me the melodies
of childhood
as the apricot glow turns
to voiles of lavender
and crickets chirp
in the coolness
of twilight —

come sit with me
on this piano bench.

Play not for the crowd
but for me alone,
Polonaise
in A-flat major —

let me watch your fingers
caress
the ivory keys,
let my heart explode
with pounding octaves,
climb crescendos,
dance with staccatos —

Tell me how long time ago
before bedtime stories
and childhood dreams,
you dipped my spirit
in the romance of Liebestraum,
the sweetness of nocturnes,
of etudes and preludes —

Now, as your fingers tend
the autumn flowers,
come sit with me,
play the melodies,
the music
of my soul
once again.

© 2012  by D. G. Vachal

*** Photograph: Heart and Music by Dragan Todorovic