ALLEGORY Poem: EMERGING IMAGES, by Brian Padjen

You scattered the pieces across the table,
Searched for edges, assembled the frame.
In silence, I stole a center piece,
Hid it in my pocket,
Waiting for you to notice
The void within the puzzle,

And in that moment,
Recall the culprit of the incomplete image –
Perhaps seek out the thief.

Time passed on:
Seagulls over the ocean?
Wolves in their dens?
Flowers in a garden?
Something white…

She left, seeking the piece of him
She once loved,
Hoping to find it
In the spaces between,
The quiet theft,
A piece of him in her search.

Through my days and years,
I carried the uncertainty
Of what drove her away:
The wing tip of a bird?
The tooth of a wolf?
The water bead on the stem of a leaf?
Something elusive…

Wherever geometry shaped itself,
Whoever flashed a color of the form,
I sought the complete image,
Unaware that within me
Lay the missing piece.

Peripheral blurs intercepted my vision,
Shaped into clear forms:
A scarf fluttering,
A flower blooming,
Shadowed trees standing still.

Faithful to remembrance,
To keep a piece of you within me,
Or a vision of me within your search.

Could the worn edges of one of a thousand
Preserve the desire to sustain the man you knew,
One shape shy, dampened by a wish for the whole?
You who knew me more in absence,
Traced the contours of my theft,
Mapped the waters of the irresolute island,
Where my reflection,
Incomplete,
Withheld the whole.

And in that quiet revelation,
Found the missing piece within,
Binding the fragments of our puzzle,
In the search for what remained unseen.