Marge Simon
Missing
On a morning stroll
I see my mother
in the impossible now,
fused with misted sunlight.
She stands quietly
in a bright almost dress,
a bit of fashion unbecoming
even if it were real,
but she’d never wear red,
red was my color.
She was a teacher—
the sort who said
in her soft Nashville voice,
Make good choices.
I reach out to her,
disbelieving the moment,
touching the not-quite fabric
of that dress.
She sees my hand
with its imagined wedding ring,
What happened to you, Margaret?
Where is the rest of you?
_________
Marge Simon is an award-winning poet/writer living in Ocala, Florida. Her works have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Abyss & Apex, New Myths, Silver Blade, Polu Texni, Crannog, JoCCA, Magazine of F&SF, and numerous pro anthologies. She is a multiple Stoker winner and Grand Master Poet of the SF & F Poetry Association. She received the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. Website: http://www.margesimon.com
Backstory: Inspiration for the poem was a blurred photo of a female form in a park setting; only small areas of the photo could be seen clearly, such as the placement of a hand, the color of an eye. My mother passed of cancer when I was newly twenty-one, a very long time ago. I have never written about her, but for years after her death, I didn’t “make good choices” at all. I am currently experimenting with what I call the “MFA Degree” literary poetry. In my own, I want the result to be easily relatable.
Editor’s Notes/Image Credit: Misty forest trees with sunrays [wallpaperflare.com] and superimposed image of a dame [residentevil.fandom.com; no free equivalent was found]
