SPEAR, SUSAN

WILD TRAVELER

 

I rip the yellowed newsprint

From your German china bowl

And find mere shards, the fragments

Of a once unbroken whole.

 

I trace a fractured rose

Imposed on white and lavender

And see the pattern you chose

Is stamped “Wild Traveler.”

 

Intently searching for

A more revealing clue,

I rummage in a drawer

To find a print of you.

 

Your eyes and lips and nose

Are startlingly my father’s,

Your waistline—mine, but those

Likenesses are all it offers.

 

I am your last grandchild,

The one you never knew.

Were you fragile, sharp, and wild?

Am I at all like you?

 

Susan Spear holds an MFA in poetry with an emphasis in verse craft from Western State Colorado University. She teaches poetry and creative writing at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood, CO. Her poems have appeared in Academic Questions, The Lyric, Mezzo Cammin, Relief, Angle, The Rotary Dial and other journals, both print and on-line. She serves as the Managing Editor of Think, a journal of poetry, reviews, and criticism, housed at Western State.