Revelation And Concealment Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

I can’t honestly say that I really knew her.
It was like glimpsing shadows in the pitch of night
where form and features part and then come together
and appear to be one due to the lack of light.

Her eyes were a depressed revelation of blue.
The windows of her house stood lonely and alone,
framed in the center of mellifluous milieu
where spirit was broken by a heart turned to stone.

They used to call her Lady Luck when times were young
and sugary kisses paved pathways to a dream,
but those days of beauty shall remain unsung
beneath the tears of torment that turned into stream.

Still waters run deep in the weep of the ocean,
in the jagged scars of fear that furrow the face,
beyond a mountain of heartache and emotion
where the heart and the mind seek a separate space.

The soul bleeds with its dowry of merciless pain,
an endless chain of tears to imprison the heart
in tenebrous tumult and resilient rain –
Such a sad flower, with its petals pulled apart!

Her eyes were a depressed revelation of blue
but concealed everything in the wall behind;
and no one really knew her, though they thought they knew.
She walked alone down the corridors of her mind.

I hear her footfalls in the echoes of the night
when sad stillness thunders in the sky overhead.
When the shadows find sway in the soft streaks of light,
I can feel her breathing by the side of my bed.

They say she’s my mother, but I never knew her.
There are no roots, no tree, no family, no me.
When the veil of morning begins to softly stir,
a reticent river empties into the sea.

They say she’s my mother, but my mother has died.