By Gary Moore
I need to find my folks in Mapleton.
My Daddy said to look there for some kin.
Or maybe up in Youngstown.
A shame we were such a scattered lot.
“There’s so little time, now that Mama’s gone,”
Daddy said, while charging me for sure
with the powers of an historian,
the family conciliator.
And maybe it is because Big Mama’s gone,
but his eyes turn inward and grow distant,
possibly searching for more time, long past,
hard to capture, even harder to hold,
and his voice grows dusty with the decades
covering over his sense of loss.
Gary E Moore, after a long career in education, stepped away from teaching during the pandemic and chose to focus on the pursuit of a lifelong passion for poetry and storytelling. During this time, his debut poetry collection, Songs For The Cleveland Avenue Warriors: Songs from the Past, Present and Future, was published by creativeonion Press, and he recently completed SFTCAW: Reality and Fame, his sophomore effort, as well as an Afrofuturist short story collection, The Wayward Home For Retired Superheroes And More Astonishing Tales From The Hood. Moore is most proud to identify himself as a Poet, an Author and a Dad.
