Elizabeth Geelhoedt

​Ten blue memories ago,
sporadic gusts across the years,
the dike-frame carved your endless glow
and whispered silence to the sea’s undertow.
(You were like a queen to me.)

 

As your father cast his yellow seed,
your sugared loaf became a shore
a hidden harbor, chessed and beguiled,
where the shuttered oyster opens to

the Spirit, the Mother,
and the Holy Child.

 (You were like a queen to me.)

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Your men were never—let it stand—
no paragons; your stockings torn,
their footsteps missing promised land.
Yet still a ship finds home at dawn:
the waters cloaked like a blurred boudoir,
and grief denies its final scar.
(Even then, you were a queen to me.)

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And so the golden light bears on
your name beyond the brine and beams
where drawn and murmured mudflats
cradle your fading dreams,
in a silent, layered embrace.
(And still, you are a queen to me.)

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