The Return
You
wait for me as I echo
Like
a note reverberating
From
the centre of my turns
on
a carnival ride.
I
sit on a white paper
Maché,
gilded horse, circling
The
flowering wood rings
Of
my years at the edge of time.
At
that merry-go-round
You
stand eternal.
A
fixed star.
Pattern
of my seasons.
Steadfast,
you wait for me
To
alight from my manège of vagaries.
I
love you blindly
Like
protons and electrons
Love
the nucleus
Of
their atom
Without
knowing it.
Magnetism
of centrifugal force
Spinning
coherently, returning
Constant
on its swivel
Out
of simple physics
God
particles
You
and I
Ghosts in the spin
Of our continuous return.
We
are the waves
Oscillating
towards space.
Sunlight
fading to starlight
And
moons repeating in cycles,
Spyrographing
reality
Into
a melody
Of
life’s familiar refrain.
Heart
beat
Blood
pulse
A
carousel
Of
pastel paper pulp
Childish
vehicles and horses
Prinked
with gold and silver
Roses,
curlicues & diamonds
Of
broken mirror glass
Reflecting
the passage
Of
our vanishing
Faces,
our miraculous
Temporal
voyage.
Refrain
Tempus inreparabile fugit
Piano
music trickles like water,
liquid
waves of sound, undulations
Of
light fragments, Escher
Scapes repeating
Unto
themselves
Before
disaster
Before
the sparking
Spinning
top
Of
your molecules
Spun
out unbound
And
your form
That
face of love and goodness
Turned
away from me
Into
a black scarf of stars.
Yet
for a while we held
that
wheel of chance.
They
say that time is non-linear,
But
circular, a cochlear spiral.
We
return inescapably
Through
memory
To
those circuits we incised
With
our living
In
the universe’s vinyl long play.
You
will always
Be
waiting for me
Like
the sun.
Look!
I am a child
Showing
off for you
Riding
that princess chariot
In the peach organza dress
You
embroidered
&
that green panno lenci
Hair
band with the tiny blooms.
You’re still young, in your prime.
I know nothing
Of
what’s to come ahead
Assured
only of this moment’s truth.
I
will return endlessly
Here
and to all the other points
We
stitched in time.
Maybe
they are other worlds
In
superposition
Other
dimensions, heavens
And
dreamworld scapes
Spaces
lit with love and sun.
A
luna moth fluttering,
Spins
a pale green carousel
Of
diaphanous wingtips.
Feeds
on sunlight
Ever
circling an invisible centre.
So
joyful!
So
beautiful!
She
is so young.
Her
life, so brief.
The Possum and The Moon
Are
out tonight
And
they are not the only ones
On
this cool May dusk.
The
sky, a blue gas disk,
The
moon, a plate
Of
abundant metaphors
Spills
out
Its
captive sunlight
And
beside the tallest pines
Cassiopeia’s
brightest point
Blazes
a beauty mark.
I
stand
In
my unavenged awe
And
wonder
Inside
the star-lit glass dome
Of
this terrestrial sublunary world
Womb
of my skull’s carapace.
I
have placed slices of bread
And
cut apples
For
the silver possum
Who
visits my stone porch
At
the closing of each sunset,
When
humans recede
To
their slumber
And
animals surface
Seeking
sustenance
Safe
at last in night’s cover.
Just
me, the moon,
A
few stars and the possum,
The
trees charcoaling to night forests
Nestling God’s creatures
In
their nests
The
possum’s hands
My
hands
The
silent atrocities
Of
nature’s food chain
My
own angst and tragedies
The
planetary remoteness
Of
this night’s own sadness
At
the defeat of light
By
all its negations
Except
for the captive refractions
Of
it in the blink of each star,
Each
stone, bloom and animal
Silvering
Earth and the face of the moon.
In Those Meticulous Rituals of Dressing In Our Sunday Best
You
and I created the world
With
our gaze, our observing,
Holding
on to the sturdy axis
Of
our balcony. We were the cosmos
In
a timeless, eternal spark
We
will forever inhabit.
I
clung to you in orbit,
Ellipse
of a moon to a planet
Of
the same substance
Broken
off in two.
Sunshine:
source and illumination
Of
our spirit bound entanglement,
Though
light years divide realities
On
calendar pages. My smallness,
Your
grandeur, my unavoidable growth
And
our slow receding to absence.
Our
forms were the infinite
Husks,
masks of all being
Returning
for a season
Like
the vermilion roses.
Oh
voice of nurturing and reason,
Tell
me again of the order of things!
Those
rituals of meals, finesse, manners
And fashions. Clench my insignificance
In
your shadow, sheltered
And
enriched by your knowing.
Give
me the city once more,
The
sun and its blue penumbra.
Let
me bask in your ideal, iridescent
As
your necklace of glass pearls.
Protect
me from the precarious void
Lurking
beyond the railing.
Come
back through the centuries
Mother!
Lace us up one more time
To
the brightness of this day.
Now
that I am old.
Now
that we have lost the centre.
Now
that you are gone.
Silt
Weathering.
Regolith.
Frost
shattering and haloclasty.
Abrasion.
Fluvial comminution.
Attrition.
Grinding. Blunt force.
At
0.0063 millimetres
In
the Udden-Wentworth scale,
The
ethereal lattice of quartz
And
feldspar silts the fertile deltas
Of
the world. A crystallography
Of
atoms. Molecules. Dust.
I
too am made of this.
Sedimentation
of centuries. Eons.
Ephemeral
fragments of ruins.
Rubble
of collapsed walls. Bones.
Pulverized.
Windswept. Crimson.
Erstwhile
stone and flesh.
My
days, effluvial silting.
Routed
in veins below my skin.
You
wondered how they’d look.
Carved
inward. Lifeless.
Alluvium
of clay to sift through, blind.
God
sparks aligned by love, instead.
Arranged
in predetermined order.
Alive
at the centre. Neutrinos. Cherubim.
Feux Rouges
At
the carrefours, avenues
Usher
us, divergent.
Trace
bridges through clouds.
Over
lakes. Tether neuronal
Intermittent-yellow
line segments.
Roads
branch out like deltas
Of
concrete labyrinths. Loop serpentine.
Unfurling
in the expanses of the world.
In
the toxic hues of sub-zero dawn,
Nauseous
traffic exhales exhaust.
Night
shuts its wings
And
the sun, ethereal egg to the east,
Makes
its way westward
Over
this town, where this morning,
Like
each morning, we are reborn to ourselves
Huddled
in our parkas, with our coffees,
Our
car radios, breakfasts on the go.
Revamped
into one more time slot.
This
day we name and carve with our rituals,
Born
again to adaptation. We are words tumbling
Onto
a new page of some half written book. We coalesce
Some
sort of meaning from the totality of our days, the whorl
Of
them coiling into an ever strengthening helix
Surviving
winds and blunt force on this tangible terrain.
The
page is blank and seems benign,
With
all the tabs open to a thousand yesterdays,
The
memory of them, intruding pop-ups
Of
non continuous text claiming attention, stitching upon this
What
I imagine to be time’s arrow, past to present
Continuity
to future me on an invisible trajectory
Through
places, faces, events, my life, this story
I
weave of the years, these words.
Josie Di
Sciascio-Andrews is a poet, author, teacher and the host & coordinator of
the Oakville Literary Cafe Series. Her latest book of poems Sunrise Over Lake Ontario, was launched
in 2019. Her previous poetry publications include: Sea Glass, The Whispers of Stones, The Red Accordion, Letters from the
Singularity and A Jar of Fireflies. Josie’s poetry has been shortlisted for
the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award,
Descant’s Winston Collins Prize, The Canada Literary Review, The Eden Mills Literary Contest and The Henry Drummond Poetry Prize. Her poetry has won first place in Arborealis Anthology Contest of The Ontario
Poetry Society and in Big Pond
Rumours Literary E-Zine. Some of her poems feature on The Niagara Falls Poetry website. One of her pieces was included by
Priscila Uppal in Another Dysfunctional
Cancer Poem Anthology, Mansfield Press, in
2018, rated by Chatelaine Magazine as one of the best Canadian poetry books
of 2018. Josie is the author of two
non-fiction books: How the Italians
Created Canada (the contribution of Italians to the Canadian
socio-historical landscape) and In the
Name of Hockey ( a closer look at emotional abuse in boys’ sports.) Josie
teaches workshops for Poetry in Voice and for Oakville Galleries. She writes
and lives in Oakville, Ontario.
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