Coming Back by Beverly Fontaine

 

 

“Coming Back” by Beverly LaFontaine

 

The rosemary thirsts. The brown rice is mealy.
A spider spins a universe between a leg of the piano
and a shadowed corner of the living room.
Get sick, stay in bed and that’s what happens.
You become a ghost in your own life.
Bits of me are floating back like moons to their
mother planet. No one else has this exact memory
of honey on toast or this bitter echo of a child lost.
I water the rosemary, sweep away cobwebs, let light and sound
stitch my wounds, healing across time and space.

 

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Beverly LaFontaine is a Los Angeles-born  poet  and  playwright.    As a collaborative artist she has worked with composer Tom Flaherty to create The Cellist of Sarajevo, a chamber music piece.  She  was  commissioned  to  create  six  poems  that  were  incorporated  into  the sculptural  work  of  Walk  a  Mile  in  My  Shoes,  a  public  art  project  dedicated  to  Martin  Luther  King  and sponsored  by  the  City  of  Los  Angeles  Department  of  Cultural  Affairs.  Believing as  she  does  that  the  arts  articulate societies’ most deeply held and cherished beliefs and aspirations, Beverly served as an arts administrator for three decades.  On “Coming Back” she shared, “After months of surgery, chemo and radiation, I was truly thankful to return to a life outside of my body and its demands.”

Author: A Room of Her Own

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