local_library Three Hats, One Owner, Three Temporary Wearers

by Duane Anderson

Published in Issue No. 267 ~ August, 2019

A picture hangs in the living room

of my brothers, the three of us

posing with our dad.

Each of the brothers,

wearing one of our dad’s hats.

We weren’t just smiling,

we were laughing,

not at our dad,

but at his hats.

 

I look at the picture now.

Though we are all still smiling

in that picture,

I know now that

one of us is gone,

lost in a world no one knows.

It is not death,

even though we do not know it well

enough so we can understand it.

One brother hasn’t found his way

out of the other world.

We are patiently waiting.

The smiles

too are waiting.

 

 

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Duane Anderson currently lives in La Vista, NE, and volunteers with the American Red Cross as a Donor Ambassador on their blood drives. He has had poems published in Poetry Quarterly, Fine Lines, The Sea Letter, Cholla Needles, Wilderness House Literary Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and several other publications.