1921: The Idle Class


They have gone to a place so distant
we cannot hear them.
From mouths uselessly moving,
voices drift like smoke forever lost.

Their helpless faces
are scrubbed to the color
of storm clouds,
a ghostly washing.

They don’t know they are shadows.
They walk, chase, fall, colorlessly.
One hundred years
haven’t stopped them.

A young woman rides a horse
long since gone to dust
as she has.
Trees flutter in a black and white wind,
their movement haunting,
a bit too slow to believe in.

Somewhere under the same sun
my father moves
in the loud colors of a boy.
He plays in a lost place,
waving six-year- old arms
I will one day rest in,
runs towards more than eighty years
that wait for him,
calling in muted voices
he is yet too young to hear.

Kathryn de Leon

If you have any thoughts on this poem,  Kathryn de Leon would be pleased to hear them.