James Jarrell
Your life is a great story.
Give it the
perfect setting.
Escape to simplicity. Enjoy new friendships. It's time
to do what you want to do, when you want to do it.
Here is a community founded on the idea that senior living
should be comfortable and secure, absolutely, but also
much more. How about purposeful and vibrant? Life in all
its shining brilliance?that's retirement at Arbor Acres.
ArbonAcres
United Kcihodtst Rrtirrmcffl|Loinroumry
Purposeful Retirement
in (amtfort and Security
I What's
No t Left
I By Sam Barbee
Hands clasp the Tube Rose can
after she has heard me. The snuff s
pungent scent spills on her breath.
She answers each question, dabbing
corners of her lips in between. Clarity
clothed in a wince, she explains
all things must leave you one day,
even her lemon-yellow canary,
like the emerald mate a season ago.
Comfortable, over-upholstered chair
positioned by a window, she picks
at doilies protecting threadbare arms.
Grandmothers know quandaries
are the same. Counsel and notions
are the same, disturbances too.
Only her throne needs shielding.
Draped in fatigue, conscious
what else has been taken,
she locates ebullient truth,
eloquent reformation wrapped in prayer:
weeping spends the night, while
joy comes in die morning. As the cage
hangs empty, door open, she motions
out the window, over the hill, and
explains the pair are together, there
in some bird heaven, tending one another,
exalting in a persimmon tree, in a grove,
near a calm lake where old fishermen offer
them skewered gills of their catch, and toss
the long-day's leftover worms onto the shore.
Sam Barbedspoems have appeared Crucible, Asheville Poetry Review, Potato Eyes,
Georgia Journal St Andrews Review, Charlotte Poetry Review, and Pembroke Magazine.
He was awarded an "Emerging Artist'grantfrom the Winston-Salem Arts Council
in 1994 to publish his first collection Gianges of Venue (Mount Olive Press). He
has been a featured poet on the North Carolina Public Radio Station WFDD and
received the S9th Poet Laureate Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society for
his poem "The Blood Watch"