I saw your silent soul-searching
A makeshift Scandinavian legend
In Norwegian lowlands and highlands
Where on the coastal shore
Of a glaciered freshwater sea
An arctic imitation for first
Generation immigrants and a
Fading taste of the former land
Though for the second, each birthday pause
Followed seven months of lonely
Hibernation before the spring thaw, a slow drip
Of melting snow drifts, and before the
Midnight sun where there was little
To do but still I couldn’t shake the
Misgivings of your Myrtle and Ted
Under the covers on polar nights
In Korea with the Army as a Captain
You drove a lumbering Doom Turtle
A 90mm cannon of contempt
One-hundred tons of freedom
An earthquake of premonition
And a fearful prosecutor in the face
Of lost freedom, all so Bernadette, through a veil,
Could smell the lilacs and eat waffle cones
In the sunset on a perfect August day
Licking the drips from the apex of an
Ice cream tower before it ran down
Your arm on a perfect summer day
At Bald Eagle Lake followed by a banana split
Commemorating the birthdays you loved
Like a big kid panning a hoard of gifts
Most of all blooming lilacs for a purple
Hedge attracting bees and butterflies
And a fragrant yard of French parfum
Bribing the quickening of amused
Neighbors and now. You’re gone for
Fourteen years, but I hear your voice
Your crowing Hey Kenny
Still ringing and I hold close your favored
Daughter as a daily reminder, blinded by
The full weight of a liberated love I’d first
Known, you took me as your own even
Though I was cautious but it was a common
Occurrence if not in life then in the
Aspirations of my hallucinations when I was
Young, knowing you were my waning saint
Kenneth Boyd, award-winning writer, is a neurodivergent poet and former jazz musician. He is disabled but uses his perspective to enrich his writing. His poetry appears in the Burningword Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, The Light Ekphrastic, Wayfarer Magazine, Empyrean Literary Magazine, eMerge Magazine, Flora Fiction, Unlost Journal, The Haikuist, Haiku Journal (forthcoming), and elsewhere. He is a winner of a Royal Palm Literary Award, Empyrean Poetry Competition, and Penumbra Poetry Contest. Grasshopper Dreams (2023) is his debut poetry collection. Kenneth is a graduate of the UCLAx Creative Writing Program and a former Assistant Poetry Editor at Southland Alibi magazine.