Blue Love
A tribute.
On his first day of college,
he held his tray in a crowded cafeteria,
eyed the room for a safe spot.
Ah, an open seat, three coeds
and one other guy,
strangers to each other
so he fit in.
He sat down with the guy on one side,
a slim blonde girl on the other.
His eyes focused on his tray,
on his uninteresting food,
which he began to pick at,
finally glanced next to him into the eyes of the blonde,
the beautiful, sparkling blue eyes
that chose to gaze in his for forty years.
More than beauty,
a startling painter,
a teacher of craft,
specialized in blue
as if her blue eyes were her palette,
indigo, azure, turquoise, cobalt, robin’s egg…
sad and happy blue,
world-wide galleries.
No blue marriage though,
twins, world trips to historic forests,
hearts knotted.
Years later, as the disease slowly
discolors her mind,
he holds her frail hand,
looks into her eyes,
the blue replaced by a cloud of gray,
no spark, not even an ember.
Finally, he releases the hand
too weak to grasp back
rises
shuffles down the hall of the Unit,
his broken heart
more full of love
than it was at that table
long ago.
Vern Fein
Vern Fein is a
career special education teacher who decided to write fiction after he retired,
but wrote a few poems also and now has over seventy poems published in a
variety of venues like *82 Review, The Literary Nest, Bindweed Magazine,
Gyroscope Review, Ibis Head Review, Former People, 500 Miles, and The Write
Launch, and has non-fiction pieces in Quail Bell, The Write Place at the Write
Time, and Adelaide, plus a short story in the online magazine Duende from
Goddard College.
Tags:
Poetry