Published in One Town Folio, 1998. Sponsored by The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics Support for the Arts Foundation

Photo of Bernice Day-Daniels as a young woman. Asked to record some stories about her past, her lower lip quivered.

 Framed in Silence

Mummified figures

Climb multi-directional stairs

Like shadows of Coleridge’s opium dream

In this piece of art

Entitled “Relativity”

One couple sits eating

Another twosome stroll

Arms intertwined

Their wrapped feet inches from the ground

Like Dali’s wife Gala

Suspended above her chair

The figures faceless

In their tightly enclosed humanity

My eyes fix upon

One lone figure

Who stands

Two steps from the top

Held in abeyance

Unable to continue

Hanging her head

As if Escher has had her released

From Prophyro’s dark closet

Her outstretched hand

Grasps the railing

Like the grip of a child’s fat pink fingers

Digging into her father’s flannelled arm

At a Halloween haunted house

Mutations

Framed in silence

Within this surreal world

Of the artist