A Still Life Poem by Jack Mashman

I seem to stare through transoms
Through half opened doors.
Behind these doors I sense a presence,
Two shadows move in the twilight
Just barely out of my vision.
They move in a dream slowly,
Still life pantomime across a lawn
Voices whisper through opened windows
To sound of sirens and flashing lights.

She kneels in prayer
Before her crewel embroidered garden,
He hovers in the foreground
Bushy eyebrows and a pasted smile
Woven into a tapestry frozen in time,
Canvas is a silk screen landscape
On a moonlit night,
The bay is calm and the breezes mild.

House lies vacant in its stare,
Sightless windows shutters gone
Throw their shadows on the street.
Vegetation swirls in an autumn mural,
Where once was pride in the faded garden.
Somewhere in another country
The latest General has again been ousted.
The seasons have come and gone.


1981