Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest

Kaleidoscopic I Scream Clones
by Zoraida Colon-Collado

TwEnty-First Contest
third Place

When you look at me sideways with that slight smile
you look just like your Auntie when she found
that she could walk the fence just like a tightrope
and never break a sweat.

Some things you don't forget.

As you tried on new dresses for the school play
while posing in the mirror, I could see
my mother as she straightened up her church hat
looking back at me.

Some things you get for free.

And when you took your bike apart to fix it
thinking hard and poised with furrowed brow,
my father's wisdom blew in on a memory —
wish he were here today.

Some things don't fade away.

Like glass in a kaleidoscope keeps shifting
always the same but somehow always new
ancestral patterns meet, and break, and re-form
and take the shape of you.

Some things, are always true!

About the Author
Zoraida Colon-Collado writes: Once I read a poem by Robert Frost, about the woods, so dark and deep and miles to go before I sleep, and as I felt the snow blowing by my cheeks, and heard the little horses bells, saw the smoke rise from his nose and lived the immense silence that only woods can hold, I knew I wanted to have that power, to make people live what I have lived, see what I have seen, feel what I have felt.

The pen, is indeed, mightier than any sword.