Poetry: Vanilla Eulogy by Thomas Zimmerman

Vanilla Eulogy

 

I couldn’t write about them till they died.

Dad went so quickly, cancer eating years.

And Mom stayed way too long: dementia blacked

the windows of her soul. There were no deathbed

reconciliations. We had lived

and worn our conflicts and our contradictions

out. I love them but don’t miss them. They

have stayed, at least a version of them I

can swallow and digest. They made me, fed me,

taught me. I can see their faces in

my own, a pentimento glowing through

the grainy canvas of my face, old ghosts

that haunt my attic and my basement,

and my poems, footnotes to my life

Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Big Windows Review  at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Poems of his have appeared recently in The Beatnik Cowboy, Bombfire, and These Lines.