Pictures Mother on her knees planting bulbs in the flower bed and father secluded in his study upstairs perfecting tax returns: this is what I see so many years later, as I drift between the kitchen where I wash a few dishes at a time, and the living room where all sorts of things are happening. Don't ask me to supply the details. I'm steeped in them as it is, what with this stay at home business putting on hold all surges of motion in the brimming world while yielding and framing these simple scenes of diligence and devotion. My own tax picture looks bleak and I know next to nothing about flowers, but there's a poem in my mind that does not have the words Girl With a Pearl Earring or The Potato Eaters and it goes on like a patient Bach fugue, branching off into the dark and back into the light again, and trying not to forget the main theme.
Francis Fernandes grew up in the US and Canada. He studied in Montréal and has a degree in Mathematics. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Zodiac Review, Beyond Words, What Rough Beast, Third Wednesday, Poetry Potion, Montréal Writes, Underwood, Bywords, Enclave. He lives in Frankfurt, Germany, where he writes and teaches.
Amethyst Review 