Author: Theresa Wyatt
Location: Derby, New York

Theresa Wyatt has returned to writing poetry after a lengthy career that included teaching art and adult education classes for twelve years within the New York State Prison System. Her poems have appeared in Blood & Thunder, Kaleidoscope, Seven Circle Press, the Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, and forthcoming in 2010, the American Psychological Association's Journal: Families, Systems & Health, among others.

---

In Search Of

Shortly before FDR wedded the airwaves
to its listeners, the old man and his wife
could be heard through the window
nearly every night discussing bonds.

"Is the war over yet?" she would murmur
again and again in a liquored-like voice.
At this crazed repetition, he would slowly
turn his back to her, unroll the day's paper,

see that the war was surely not over,
lead her dazed, exhausted mind and body
down the hallway to where the photos were,
coax her memory through candle flames saying,

this one is for Johnny and this one is for James.

Later, he'd take the paper, reshape the length
and width of it into new forms to swat flies,
recast his melancholy and grief by tuning
the radio dial backwards and forwards

and forwards and backwards again
in a liquored-like march,
over and over

in search of the infamy
he senses is coming,
prays is coming,

so that he can be the first
to tell his wife,
the next hopeful,
sober morning
when she wakes.

---

---