Laura Ann Reed

Laura Ann Reed, a San Francisco Bay Area native, taught modern dance and ballet at the University of California, Berkeley before working as a leadership development trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the United States, Canada and Britain. She is the author of the chapbook, Shadows Thrown, (Sungold Editions, 2023). Laura and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest. www.lauraannreedpoet.com

Whose Eyes Hold The Light

I don’t know why I did not stay
with him in Lourmarin
where he introduced me to his neighbor,
the widow of Albert Camus.
He showed me the room
where her late husband wrote—
the masculine desk, granite balcony
overlooking a garden.  In the photograph
I lean on the balustrade gazing down
at the camera he trains on my face.
It was May.  I remember the red tulips
in bloom.  I study the girl who would
soon leave him, her heart swollen
with silence.  She looks at him
as he focuses the lens, her eyes holding
the light that filled the bowls
of those flowers.