for Chris Allen
Winter evenings just after sunset,
my future father would stride athletic
under and beyond that lone blue light set
back from locked doors, dark windows, pathetic
white walls of the asylum, and through chilled
Little Rock night, a cocky bachelor
orderly, making his way to her, filled
with a young man’s hope for touch, for smiles, for
heaven’s laughter glowing in her hazel
eyes. My future mother, ears a bee’s hum
from a day’s work on the switchboard at Bell,
would blot her lipstick with Kleenex, succumb
to admiring mirrors, ponder and sigh,
awaiting fiery blue light of his eyes.
Roger Armbrust
February 2, 2007
