Sepia Eyes
The green terrazzo floor
clicks with my feet
as time marked
by a clock in
a whispering room;
sound absorbed by
decades of sepia eyes,
hoping eyes; drawn
finally from cool shadows
into the muting
stairwell light descending;
the end of each hall
an exit, abandoning
composite faces held,
suspended and hung in time.
Passing from English and
Latin to History
through Science and Math
descending the floors like they
descended from the wall
each in turn;
into war, to marriage,
to death, to childbirth,
to old age, to farms
and stores, to servitude
or supremacy;
connected to the place
or transcendent.
Dried mud flakes
from sweaty brown boots
mixed with aging wax
and snow and rain,
devastating sun and cold;
absorbed in the wood
and plaster became the walls;
captured the faces,
fused together the
reflecting hallway light,
the shadowy stillness;
into one scent; one essence;
grabbing the body, the eyes,
the soul for an eternity.
Father is in the office
absolved in today,
and I walk the halls
absorbed, entranced and
connected to yesterday
in what might have been
in what did not happen
in what could not happen
in the ordinary
of the future’s past.
And at the end
I strain against the bar
against the weight,
against the old tight front doors;
out into the summer heat
their many eyes held
encompassed in the deep
protecting coolness.
Nashville
July 13, 2004
Greenfield Series
©2004 Sepia Eyes — Joseph W. Yarbrough
Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
clicks with my feet
as time marked
by a clock in
a whispering room;
sound absorbed by
decades of sepia eyes,
hoping eyes; drawn
finally from cool shadows
into the muting
stairwell light descending;
the end of each hall
an exit, abandoning
composite faces held,
suspended and hung in time.
Passing from English and
Latin to History
through Science and Math
descending the floors like they
descended from the wall
each in turn;
into war, to marriage,
to death, to childbirth,
to old age, to farms
and stores, to servitude
or supremacy;
connected to the place
or transcendent.
Dried mud flakes
from sweaty brown boots
mixed with aging wax
and snow and rain,
devastating sun and cold;
absorbed in the wood
and plaster became the walls;
captured the faces,
fused together the
reflecting hallway light,
the shadowy stillness;
into one scent; one essence;
grabbing the body, the eyes,
the soul for an eternity.
Father is in the office
absolved in today,
and I walk the halls
absorbed, entranced and
connected to yesterday
in what might have been
in what did not happen
in what could not happen
in the ordinary
of the future’s past.
And at the end
I strain against the bar
against the weight,
against the old tight front doors;
out into the summer heat
their many eyes held
encompassed in the deep
protecting coolness.
Nashville
July 13, 2004
Greenfield Series
©2004 Sepia Eyes — Joseph W. Yarbrough
Reproduction prohibited without written permission.