Stephen Mead

W O R D S • I D E A S : S T E P H E N M E A D

Weight of the Year (for Charlie)

Day 365, and hour-glass true are the sands accumulated to make this transparency convex. Still memory happens too fast to be anything but an opal opaque but for what becomes milestone moments lustrous with shifting colors, details, sensations, facets. Consider that bed of heaped coats on the celebratory eve, the weight of that pile scented with something like Chanel, talcum, the spices of old as resonant as peppermints found in a winter pocket's forgotten tissue. Such fun to climb up upon the buttons, cuffs, collars before burrowing beneath with puppy-glee though there is a cost if caught. Grown-ups, if lucky, become of this festive play, carry like sediments stirrings which are the magic of holiday lights seen from underneath while lying on the floor in a room completely dark but for those watery tiers towering, wave upon wave, towards the seas seasoned top; then ceiling-reflected as shadows and coronas, a whole cove of celestial penthouses. Fancy is as fancy does but there is a growing pull the older know hoping to have enough attention to remember every absolute of just one living thing loved so well that to summon it comes like breathing, face-close, before life sleeps breath away, head to breast, nodding, slowing like a fortunate parrot.

Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he's been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. He is also grateful to have managed to keep various day jobs for the Health Insurance. Poetry on the Line, Stephen Mead: http://stephenmead.weebly.com/home/poetry-on-the-line-stephen-mead