Threshold Conversation

    by Clarissa Jakobsons

Drab dressed winter.  Steady snow.

A frosty mist against treetop facades. 

Brown jacket stranger,

    woodsman from another century,

    you ring the doorbell three times

    and prop open wooden door

    with mud smeared shoes, Medusa

    cap trailing tentacles.

Is it really you—

    cousin with my mother’s ashes

    boxed in palsied right hand?

Your left palm offers her gold chain

    bracelet that’s too short, too tight.

We share the past on Emerald Street,

Chicago’s DP playground.  You played priest;

I, a novice spinning muslin habit.

Candle offerings echo Latin refrains

    until flames extinguished prayers

    in our cardboard sacristy.

Cars pass like missed moments,

    street music serenades solemn years.

Snow covers the walk.  I touch 

    your jacket, softly kiss your cheek.

© 2011 Clarissa Jakobsons

A former art professor remarked that Clarissa Jakobsons’ sketchbooks look more like poetry than paintings.  Who would have guessed this observation accurately predicted her current direction?  She has twice been a featured poet at Shakespeare and Co., Associate Editor of the Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal for the past five years, and first place winner of the Akron Art Museum 2005 New Words Competition.