Possession and Loss

I think of that painting my mother had:

the handsome though saturnine aristocrat.

He looked like the humourless brother

of The Laughing Cavalier. Yet I liked it. 

And I wish I had claimed it after she died,

but I wasn’t thinking of such things then.

It is long lost now, along with all her other 

dispersed or abandoned possessions.

I see him so clearly still, in his place

on the wall of a dear house (also long gone)

in his fancy hat with the swirling brim,

and the lustrous dark green coat-sleeves.

I remember, too, a card I cherished

for its image of the Green Woman:

wrinkled and wise, in front of trees,

like the vision of her I’d once had.

A student begged to borrow it, to copy. 

I was reluctant, but she promised 

to return it very soon. She never did. 

She moved  away, leaving no address.

Remembering, I see again, or still, 

the image of that nut-brown, smiling face,

the kindly, knowing eyes. I feel again

the deep recognition between us.

So many decades later, the clarity

with which these faces return to mind

tells me the pictures need not be mourned.

They could never truly be lost or stolen.

Written for Friday Writings #154: Opposite Concepts at Poets and Storytellers United.