Forever Flashings

by Lora Lyn Stuker

Contest Winner

My father

focuses heart-gripping flashes

Across the wall screen,

Family slides.

I am small,

My brother is smaller,

My sister is smallest.

Days now dead

Reopen like old storybooks

From memories’ heaped box,

Pulling out pictures of

Cooking in Grandfather’s Dutch oven,

Playing cheetah in our

Backyard monkey-jungle,

Being beautifully Easter-bested

with my coat buttoned wrong,

Hugging a mommy minus grey hair.

Soberly I think

Of another Father

Who someday shall open my mind

And flash reeling remembering

Of every day’s minute

Across my soul,

Across the heavens,

And kindly ask me to narrate.

Photo by Jo McCarty (contest winner)