The
Shouldered Calm
(Lake Wildwood, autumn 2022)
A Calm; clear and soft like baby eyes,
Its face upturned and placidly waiting, as though Mother’s
kiss hovers above.
Its face quivers, when the breath of Mother’s cooing babble
blows across, eyes trembling with the million rippling lines broken and mended,
second by second as the Calm lies wriggling.
Father steps away, his lingering glance cast across from
behind curtains of deepening green alive with the droning of his hummed song,
thrumming from among the leaves.
Above the calm, Mother glows, Father’s side-wards light
sculpting in bas-relief her gentle smile, a million times glimmering in the
rippling eyes of the Calm.
The Calm; shouldered about by toy boxes and boughs and ticking trinkets, sliding moment by moment into the encroaching shade, the toys and their imagined lives going about in the time before dreams begin, playing and laughing, upon the drowsy shoulders of the Calm.
About Phil aka alFalaq
al-Falaq is a writer and illustrator living in Atlanta, Georgia. He loves cats and shares his home with an ornery fur ball with nine tales, at least! His collection of poetry and short stories, Threadbare is available on Amazon.
