JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

Dark in his beige armchair

Pale on her dark rocker

A man and a woman

Silhouetted in the gathering dusk

Silence brooding between them

 

Indistinct from flickering carriage

Memories from other similar scenes

Play out on an internal screen

Fill in the gaps behind the view

 

Years of toil and bitterness

Childless years

Outline distances unbridgeable

Barrenness of their iron covenant

Etched into separate loneliness

Here on autumn’s porch

 

Back to back

A man and a woman

The negative space between them

Burns into the retina

 

Leaving an optical illusion

Of closeness

Fading as night replaces day