Steven Pelcman
Poetry
Steven Pelcman was born and resided in New York, then relocated to New Orleans, and on to Los Angeles before coming to Europe in 1997. He is a writer of poetry and short stories who has spent the past few years completing the novels titled Riverbed and Spending Time and books of poems titled, Where the Leaves Darken and Like Water to Stone. He has been published in a number of magazines including: The Windsor Review, Paris/Atlantic, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Voxhumana magazine, Nomad’s Choir, Fourth River magazine, River Oak Review, Salzburg Poetry Review, Caffeine Magazine and many others. He has been nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize. Steven has spent the last thirteen years residing in Germany where he teaches in academia and is a language communications trainer and consultant.
Between the Lost and the Forgotten
And someone always goes with it
As he shuffles by
Dressed in only a diaper
Unsure of where the bedroom is.
His hands know the music
Of small things
As he walks, almost enchantingly,
On a pure white floor
Full of a wife’s discipline.
He travels in circles thinking
That his is a little death
The dark will not grieve over
And tightens his face
As insects do to unknown sound.
He does not belong
To the silence yet
And goes on imagining
Where a straight line
Can take him.
“ Watching a father lose a sense of self and slowly deteriorating is a difficult thing to do. Pain runs deep and a year or so prior to his death while visiting from Europe, I observed him late one night. Watching him inch his way through the darkness against the backdrop of moonlight on a summer evening in such silence and emptiness was heart breaking and it led me to share these emotions through poetry. I have written a number of pieces about Alzheimer’s and aging and I am happy that this poem is now available because of The Baltimore Review. ”