In a cold winter’s evening with the fire burning bright; My grandma’s eyes glowed like those embers in a charcoal fire; We boys and girls would huddle around her in a circle tight; Which tapered off towards the epicentre of warmth and desire.
Hers was a wrinkled face hardened with the toil of three score years and more; Her snow-white hair, it fell across her shoulders, like a skein of silk from head to toe; She a frail, feeble figure with a pair of teeth missing here and there; Yet, her voice had that magic to send you in a tizzy, or put you to tears.
Her thin wiry fingers created a panorama from dark and light; Those chiaroscuro stratagems would be any shadow-puppeteer’s delight; She gesticulated frantically and created a magical fantasy; Her myriad figures leapt and danced in a tumult of wild ecstasy.
Those fleeting shadows across the wall did something more than just enthral; They reinforced a bond of love from a passing generation to an upcoming; When her deep, sonorous voice recreated a dragon’s voice; It led us children scurrying for cover in each other’s embrace uniting our hearts and mind.
Those joys and terror that we shared as we lay mesmerized by our grandma’s tales; Still reverberate in my mind’s eye, a I stand today with an adult’s vision; They speak to me in muted tones of a Way of Life no more shall be; Of innocence, simple elegance, of shared values unencumbered by reason.
Now as I stand alone in that self-same hall; Its musty, desolate, time-wrecked walls; Aiming to recreate those long-lost years; I fail to capture that ambience clear.
The mirror is there before my eyes; Yet I fail to see the image bright; The mirror cracks from side to side; Proclaims of lost innocence and adult’s pride.
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