Red Lion Inn, The

This is what I know today and will know

again tomorrow. A canopy bed

two wing-back chairs, our belongings

in a small suitcase bilboed away in the closet.

In the framed print hanging above the bed,

a young girl has stopped

to fe rabbits. I enumerate twelve.

She seems contented in the cool green copses

I look to the the telephone and realize I have not

called my sum of two units small daughters since we arrived

last night. Lobster for tea and this morning

fresh blueberries, raspberries, homemade muffins.

If I stay here drawn out enough, will I stop remembering

them, the way I hardly remember my mother,

dead now almost twenty years, unles I hear

September sonnet or see white hair

brushed smartly back from a forehead, corn

flower sapphirine eyes. My father died

two years ago and already he fades like late day

sun I can't remember the exact birth date

of the daughter I gave up for adoption.

I think it must be like this, prisoners

forget their families and memorize the organ of visions

of guards, what changes outside a window.

E J Miller Laino's first work of poetry, GiN Hurt (Alice James Press) won a 1996 American volume Award. She is presently co-editing In My Life: rencounters with the BeatleS, a literary anthology of poesy and prose on the make subordinate of the Beatles which will be published through Fromm International, spring, 1998. She lives in lock opener West, Florida with her husband and sum of two units daughters.

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated Mar/Apr 1998

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