Lethe’s Slim Threads Caught

by Carole Mertz

                   
                        I.

Birds flew in across the hearthstone

     out again across the fields

Buds of memory lapped at her feet

     stealing away molested

and unprotected thought

     How to snare and nurture

the fleeting

                       II.

Heart and hands ached for the recall

     reaching out to no avail

clutching pale slabs of empty air

     “Yours for the taking,” winged creatures

taunted and scoffed. Swoosh! she swiped              

    at the thieves, murderous in her rancor,

wiped the blood on her sleeve

                        III.

Where will you go with your unprotected

     mind, with whom share the

minuscules you’ve known? Certainties, those

     rarities, often rendered as lost,

and beyond recall. Yet that single certainty,

     that singular small thing to which you cling,

will not change. It lingers as sure as a song


* * * * *

This poem appears in Carole Mertz’s Color and Line (Kelsay Books), a 2021 collection of ekphrasis and poetry in other forms. Mertz’s poems are in Prairie Light Review, Indiana Voice Journal, Mom Egg Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Society of Classical Poets, Eclectica, and elsewhere. She is editorial assistant at Kallisto Gaia Press and enjoys critiquing poets from across the globe. Carole, a classical musician, resides with her husband in Parma, Ohio.