I never noticed Ithaca’s 
unforgiving gloom 
until I left. 

My mother’s brain 
developed its own 
lake effect. 

The cosmos 
in my father’s 
eyes dimmed 
and faded over 
as his exhaustion 
from caring 
for my mother grew, 

as he thinned into  
cirrus clouds 
that my mother 
fell through. 

His world lost its color—
the bags under his eyes—
white. 

Heart 
slowly breaking, 
my father started taking 
photos, stark and dark. 
Nikons and Canons 
filtered his time. 

* After Lake Effect Snow on Earth (photograph, 5 December 2000)
by SeaWiFS Project, NASA:

Image downloaded from the public domain via Wikimedia on 5 September 2025:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lake_Effect_Snow_on_Earth.jpg

Lynne Kemen’s

full-length book of poetry, Shoes for Lucy, was published by SCE Press in 2023. Woodland Arts Editions published her chapbook, More Than a Handful, in 2020. Her work is anthologized in The Memory Palace (Ekphrastic Editions, 2024), Seeing Things 2 and Seeing Things (Woodland Arts Editions, 2024 and 2020), Earthcare (Willet Press, 2022), and What We See on Our Journeys (Willet Press, 2021). Her work also appears in Blue Mountain Review, Fresh Words, La Presa, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Poetica Review, The RavensPerch, Silver Birch Press, Spillwords, and Topical Poetry among others.

Lynne is President of the Board of Bright Hill Press and has served on many other not-for-profit boards. She is an Editor and Interviewer for the Blue Mountain Review, a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience, and a nominee for a Pushcart Prize.

Author’s website: https://lynnekemen.com/