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Ephemera

This is my first post by Blackberry, so bear with me. I’m waiting for an award ceremony to begin. My daughter Alice, 18 next month, is about to receive several Scholastics awards for her artwork. She takes in stride what has me about to burst, as though it’s up to me to enjoy the moment on her behalf. That’s what parents do, right? Well, there’s a lot more to it and this poem (written years ago) says it better.

EPHEMERA
 
How many evenings in ten years;
most spent—reading aloud, listening—
trying to be conscious of their joy?
 
Today one child is still only ten.
The other is only, still only five.
Time disappears into their growing.
 
Sometimes you think that even
to be conscious is not enough—
then you despair, like a castaway,
 
fingers cupped on the sea’s edge,
afraid to sip when it is the whole sea
you are dying, dying to drink.
Christopher Guerin is the author of two books each of poetry and short fiction, a novel, and more than a dozen children’s books. If he hadn’t spent 26 years as an arts administrator, including 20 years as President of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, perhaps he’d have worked a little harder getting them published. His consolation resides in his fiction and poems having been published in numerous small magazines, including Rosebud, AURA, Williams and Mary Review, Midwest Quarterly, Wittenberg Review, RE: Artes Liberales, DEROS, Wind, and Wind less Orchard. His blog, Zealotry of Guerin, features his fiction and poetry, including his sonnet sequence of poems after paintings, “Brushwork." He is the V.P. of Corporate Communications at Sweetwater Sound, Inc., the national music instrument retailer.

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