THE SHINE JOURNAL
Flash Literature, Poetry, Art and Photography!
A HYMN FOR WISH
by
Mary Kennedy Eastham
A sunset that was all blood, the dog
missing in the flood.
Wish, the boy I didn't know I needed
my smuggler of tangled hearts
popped living color into this blind man's life
lying with me every night on the grass
as we waited for restless stars imagined
to fling themselves steady and fast against a midnight moon.
Wish let me steal the best life and make it mine.
I love him the way you love cake for breakfast.
Alaskans have countless words to describe snow
and none to describe time.
The mind of a blind man has different tones, it's not our ruin
how can you miss what you never had?
Wish understands the melody in my soul
the haunted echoes released in fairy-tale riffs, my hymn for Wish.
If I could I would write this dog a love song every day.
People ask me, 'Why are you crying?'
I tell them if love were enough he'd still be here.
I tell them my boy is standing on the rail of the porch
ears cocked, the water rising, waiting for my whispered 'Hello'.
'Find him,' I beg the rescuers
trying to describe for them, as if I ever can,
the place where he last loved me.
MARY EASTHAM shares...
MARY KENNEDY EASTHAM calls herself a Word Actress letting her characters perform different roles on paper which is of course weaving her own needs, her own fantasies, her love, her loss and her joy into the poems and short stories she writes.
She is busy promoting her first book 'The Shadow of a Dog I Can't Forget' and is desperately trying to finish her debut short story collection, 'The Possibilities of Love'. She tells her her husband,who is feeling much neglected, "Don't give up on me!"
MOTIVATION
MARY tells us that 'A Hymn for Wish' is one of her favorite pieces. "I loved writing it. I love the characters. I raise Golden Retrievers so the dog motif presents itself often in my work. The actual inspiration came from a picture I saw after the Katrina floods of this thin, wet, dirty dog all alone on a porch railing, the waters rising around him. I couldn't let that image go."
For more information about her, check out her website at: www.RP-Author.com/MKE and please feel free to contact her directly at marylovesdogs@sbcglobal.net.