by ROBERT FILLMAN
–
Part of your life’s work has been
stolen. Can you feel your way
out of the family tomb
using only the bitter
scent of yellowing varnish
as a search light? I see you
with one hand out, reaching for
an empty frame, the other
draped against your open mouth.
Then you’re suddenly shrouded
in white, as in the Sargent
watercolor commissioned
after a stroke tilted your
smile near the end of your life.
You sit almost dissolving
in that pale wash, the color
thinned from your cheeks, lips tightened,
as if even then you knew
what could be taken away
in an instant, how the past
cradles a person’s heart till
it finds a soft place to ache.
–
* John Singer Sargent’s Mrs. Gardner in White (1922) is displayed in the Macknight Room in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in Boston.
–
Robert Fillman is the author of The Melting Point (Broadstone Books, 2025), House Bird (Terrapin Books, 2022), and the chapbook November Weather Spell (Main Street Rag, 2019). His poems have appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, and Verse Daily. An assistant professor of English at Kutztown University, he also serves on the board of Poetry-in-Transit and as poetry editor at Pennsylvania English.
© Robert Fillman
Halfway Down the Stairs 