past future present
jumbled sketches
like watercolors
blurred by rain
pelting the paper
life’s brushstrokes of
blue red yellow blended
muddied translucent
then dots of pure
pigment spotted
muted highlights that
create textured
perspective and scale
not without value
and positive space
© Pamela Rossow
This morning was a foggy one. Not too common for South Florida. I still get caught up in the emotions of the mist just as I did when I was a child. I used to be enthralled with the ghostly weather and would scurry to a quiet place to create, pencil in hand, scratching a mysterious story into existence. As an adult, I still feel a connection with that young girl. Only now, in addition to the dash to my quiet place, I acknowledge the uncanny sensation of ties to those who passed. Who are now caught in a misty limbo of sorts, misconceived as haunters, who are the ones haunted. I can relate to their restlessness, their shadows. Memories, donned in disguise, creep in and stir up latent emotions that persist under the conscious radar. I am left, like a viewer seated on a cold, padded folding chair, in a darkened room. An old projector flashes images in black and white on the bare wall in front of me: wet children in soggy socks smiling, laughing their way down a slip and slide, mockingbirds shrilly calling, waiting, fluttering to land in my cupped palms, greedily gobbling crimson cranberries, a butterfly garden bathed in moonlight, the intoxicating, overwhelming perfume of night- blooming jasmine, being cradled, feeling safe, protected for the first time in more than a decade, by someone who was my home, although I had been displaced, whose frame wasn’t four walls and a roof, rather a soul enveloping embrace. The fog has lifted, somewhat, but the pregnant, gray clouds overtly hint at imminent, cleansing precipitation. . .
he held it in his hands a box a
present like nothing he ever
saw before the packaging was
different translucent radiant
he wasn’t sure how to handle it
what was the best way to open
it what to do with it he set it
down and pondered it no
letter no tag no idea who it
was from for a split second
a frown flitted across his face
couldn’t be too long ago he
grabbed the satin bow and yanked
it entwined about his fingers
a seam in the mysterious glowing
paper he tore into it impatient
hands parted crumpled tissue
a gasp sheer surprise when he saw
what lay amidst the disarray he
lowered his head in his hands and
he cried
Pamela A. Rossow
Pamanner 