The Arc Horses Make

    by Sandra Fees

All history in the end, my father says

looking straight ahead at the photograph

propped on the roll-top desk

he and Bye Bye Shadow in the spotlight,

my mother just beyond the camera’s reach.

No one bothers to discard the maroon

and gold racing suit he wore

that night in the winner’s circle.

It hangs in the closet absent the helmet

which exists now only on film.

Life fans out behind him like

the arc horses make in the home stretch.

I miss you, he says,

when I rise to leave,

and he means what crossed the finish

that once kept us warm.

It is flesh he misses,

heat escalating off flanks

and taut sinews

two pacing as one.

© 2014  Sandra Fees

Sandra Fees is a poet and ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, living in Reading, Pennsylvania.  She received an MA in creative writing from Syracuse University and MDiv from Lancaster Theological Seminary.  Her poems have been published in Wilderness House Literary Review, the Harrisburg Review, Paterson Literary Review, and Mudfish.