CYNTHIA PITMAN -POEMS

Cynthia Pitman is a retired high school English teacher. She has had poetry published in Vita Brevis, Leaves of Ink, Amethyst Review, Postcard Poems and Prose, Right Hand Pointing, Ekphrastic Review, Literary Yard, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Three Line Poetry, Third Wednesday, and Mused. Her first book, The White Room, is forthcoming.

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Walk With Me
​

​Walk with me to the sun.
Hold me close as we stand
barefoot on the fire.
Then fall back to this world with me,
where we will walk on the water
of the stone cold stream
that runs through
our darkling dreams.
We will feel the steam rise
as we take muted steps
through its mist.
We will call this love.

​Telling Secrets

​Sit down beside me
and lean in close.
This bleak and dismal world
should not hear what passions
flutter between us.
There is no place here
for our ephemeral words
with their opaque wings
spread wide to hide them,
just for a while, from the light.
Whisper,
and let our love take flight.

 Fallen Angels
​

​When we had wings,
we would fly to the snow-capped
mountaintops on the other side
of creation. Frozen, we would pose,
as still as statues.
We would be gods.
The whole of the world
would look to us in wonder.
But our wings are gone now,
falling victim to the pose.
Now we shuffle down the pavement,
heads down,
stepping carefully
to avoid the world’s spittle.

The Shape of Shadows
​

​The straight slats of the blinds
create a sharp backdrop
for the curves on the sheer drapes
that overlay them.
These curves, in turn,
soften the straightness behind them,
a symbiotic bond.
The sunlight carries mixed messages
to the dull wooden floor.
It reflects the shadows of the two
as only one --
a joined essence,
a united entity,
a single path.
Struggle to follow this single path.
Travel the straightness in this dual shadow,
and it will lead you to the Sacred.
Travel its companion,
the curves in the shadow,
and it will lead you to the Profane.
Both are promised by the pluralism
of the symbiotic shadow.
Travel their consummation,
however, and the one shadow
fades and dissolves the shades.
There is no single path
formed by two.
The promise is false,
the bond untrue.

Hallucination
​

​Edges are soft
like angel food cake.
Faces zoom in and zoom out
from the ceiling corner.
Sunlight slices the blinds
shading the sun in the window below.
It hones the flat slats
and sharpens the shadows.
Words are too fast
and then too slow,
too loud
and then too muffled.
The air turns to a viscous liquid.
The faces undulate,
zoom in and zoom out,
fast and slow.
Voices mumble,
barely heard,
not understood.
The light desaturates the vision.
All is strange.
All is new.
A single face zooms in
and stares straight ahead,
wide-eyed and weeping.
Its mouth opens and from it flows
black lava onto a white choir robe.