Lena V. Roach

An award-winning poet, Lena V. Roach earned a Master’s Degree in English and taught in Louisiana and Texas high schools until retirement. She has published a short story in Glamour Magazine, England; poetry in regional magazines; newspaper articles in the American Press (Lake Charles) and the Times Picayune (New Orleans); a “Dear Teacher” column in nineteen newspapers; and articles sold to the national magazines New Choices and Good Old Days. Ms. Roach currently writes fiction.

 

 

Finale

Unlike hand-in-hand yesterdays
dawning with the wonder of promise,
west they walk
in the twilight chill
of their winter
come too soon.
They are out of step
but for silence
until the overwhelming weight
of his discontent
like a boulder
too long precarious
at the edge of a cliff,
crashes into the glasshouse
of her soul, annulling
once forever-dreams.
Tearless cries inside her
want the now to be then,
that springtime of fantasy in bloom,
but a backward glance east
cannot deny the posted sign:

ONE-WAY ONLY
NO RETURN.

To flee, the thought gathers force,
north, perhaps? Or south?
Reason, that surrogate lover
long absent, whispers,
“Too soon to chance unknowns.”
For now, her shambling steps
must try to match his
as west, on they walk
in the frozen chill
of knowing dark.

 

 

 

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