Grandma's Windows - Poem #64

Moonlight never shined
o’er her bed of dark pecan
through the small minded windows
of America.

No view of stars or sunny sky
no ever changing blue or gray;
A glass pane cordoning
the outside from the in;

Windows that move up and down
refusing to open;
painted shut, held rigid
by decades of enamel and decay

facing inward
on a tenement courtyard;
untouched by moonlight
no framed scene of tree or sea.

When young she never noticed
the long Winter night
while filling an oil lamp
or by a candle’s light

for the moon shined bright
through the tall windows of Naples;
windows that opened outward - outward
to the city and the world.

On the path of dreams she’d return to you
yet the sum of her trysts
is less than one morning’s vision of you
through a tall open window.

.