By Cathie Sandstrom
def: the apparent change of sound waves or light waves, varying with the relative velocity of the source and the observer.
Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary
Terminal C in a city
not on my continent;
a man walking toward me,
his face and long torso so like my
brother and also the odd gait I thought
belonged only to him, a bold toddler’s
stagger turned to swagger and finally to
what might be called cocky in a shorter
man. He’s full of purpose, intent on his
destination but when he is directly
in front of me I see his shoulders
rounded like our father’s and
as he passes I notice that the
back of his head shows
the inherited family
pattern of thinning
at the crown and
I see this is not
my brother at all
but my father
and as crowds
close around
him I feel
in my body
a frisson of
my mother’s
love for him.
___
Cathie Sandstrom‘s poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Lyric, Comstock Review, Cider Press Review, Ekphrasis and Caliban among others and are forthcoming in Spillway and Compose. Anthologies include Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond and All We Can Hold among others. A poem with essay appears in Master Class: The Poetry Mystique. Her poem “You, Again” is in the artists’ book collection, Getty Museum, Los Angeles. A military brat, she still expects to hear from the Pentagon any day.