Peripheral Divisions
The past is open to interpretation,
memories just shadows of the stories
we want to hear but are afraid
to tell. Like the black cat
on the edge of vision, holding
the truth to the darker side
of those shadows, the slide show
we play in our minds
is the truth behind our reason,
each frame with the potential
to be our downfall.
A recent prompt at The Ekphrastic Review featured a painting, Untitled (2011) by Omar Odeh, an Iraqi artist living in Canada, as an open challenge for ekphrastic poetry. I started a draft, the first two-thirds of this poem, then promptly forgot about it, until seeing the responses chosen for the final results. The writing process started with the thought of “memory,” as the shadowed half of the painting reminds me of elephants.
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I enjoyed this, Ken.
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Thank you, Robbie.
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Yes. If truth be told. Well stated and nicely put.
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Thank you. 🙂
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The stories we want to hear but are afraid to tell…that’s just right. Wonderful. (K)
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Merci.
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That is so true about memories, Ken. I like this, and how you got there from the image.
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🙂 Thank you.
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We get pretty convinced the slide-show is truth, don’t we? True or not, we rely on our inner guides. Curious, the things that manage to interrupt the slide-show long enough to introduce a new “truth” now and then.
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Fake news and fact checking, all rolled into one!
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