Five Poems by John Zedolik

 

Refreshing Verisimilitude                                             

 

Peels now the paint from the store wall’s

mural after years of adherence to the bricks,

 

to the representation of the birds above our park

and neighbourhood—from a bird’s eye view—

 

now losing its sight as the red-brown erupts

under the dry flakes half-clinging like hangnails

 

ready to cleave from the living skin, which will,

like these early emigrants, slough off

 

and leave the scene to one’s imagination

if no brush and talent refresh the hard surface

 

with colours and shapes that will place the sky

and attending feathers upon the solid, upright

 

angle of convenience and commerce,

with even a hint of a breeze above these trees

 

 

Transaction                                                                      

 

Branches, the crabbed hands

of spindly giants, crack and drop,

 

a windfall this winter to spring

as the tender does not, cannot survey

 

then circumambulate the lawn to keep

these careless limbs in line, or gathered

 

to snap and confine to a pile doomed

to truck transportation out of the yard’s

 

square patch steadfast against the ravine

that drops as if to an imagined sea

 

where one can imagine she swims eternally,

her back now finned so no more to stoop

 

over the grass that must receive the gifts

of the rambunctious, rattling trees

 

and her arms, hands, now just to push

the deep cool currents of the other ocean

 

while in our air the sign for sale has disappeared

like an uprooted trunk after felling of the bole

 

replaced by a new woman bending

to the old task with new gloves

 

while the fringe of her domain pushes

up snow drops in the infant spring

 

even as last year’s largesse deigns, continues

to drop, command the heir to continue

 

the chore, eternal crunch

 

 

Critical Eye                                                                                   

 

Quick—notice that this day is different

from the last—though the distinction

 

is difficult to discern. The subtle shade

is its own—sui generis—that will not

 

come again, the colour is twenty-four hours

then no more despite any search for its match

 

in some enchiridion of infinite swatches

indexing the chances you might have seen

 

but did not distinguish if your eyes do not

hold the sensitive lens to split the micron

 

difference in the spectrum’s strata adding

another every rising sun whose novelty

 

you should also note despite the static

scene within your purview as you rise

 

and repeat—but remember to reach

through the ostensible disguise—pull out

 

the face that is fresh and only hours old

but grows swiftly to yield to the next only one

 

 

Inundation                                                              

 

The long shadow of the late afternoon sun’s

oil seeps, a languorous river running

 

to gourmand’s delight in its savouring,

swallowing of the listing day’s light

 

that has lasted long enough for the grass

and stones, a thorough deluge to drink

 

in eight-plus hours its own generous

and exclusive span at the board

 

so time to yield to the flood now

lengthening limbs of tree and walkers

 

to low-giant stride and shadow whose

legs stretching curb to curb will dissolve

 

in the solution of sunset that heralds the rising

of the sea whose depth will drown eventually

 

any remaining islands, igneous and rebellious,

tenacious of their last reflected glory

 

they must relinquish, so sink, until the uplift,

the shine, in the near star’s next day

 

 

Conjurers                                                                    

 

I’m certain the cat was watching us

every time we passed its human’s

bungalow in the fifty-five and up park

 

in sunny Florida where the humid breeze

was slinking off the Intracoastal Waterway

with its not-even-whispered clues of the near

 

tropic flora not as secret as that set of whiskers

and furry pointed ears that must be present

under frond or front step in our revolutions

 

that could not spin fate in our favour or whisk

away the knowledge of mother lying her last

in the ICU and our lack of power to reverse

 

the course that another force, unstoppable,

had sent her on almost a week ago

while we were up in the temperate zone

 

too far and unaware to intervene, so now

we circumambulate, satellites without a sun,

in hopeless hope for a magic circle, twined

 

and twined, which Mr. Boots and his whiskers

witnesses, sympathy signalled in his sharp eyes

that catch us, futile, and the dying light.

John Zedolik - Is an adjunct English professor at Chatham University and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and has published poems in such journals as Abbey, The Bangalore Review (IND), Commonweal, FreeXpresSion (AUS), Orbis (UK), Paperplates (CAN), Poem, Poetry Salzburg Review (AUT), Third Wednesday, Transom, and in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In 2019, he published his first full-length collection, entitled Salient Points and Sharp Angles (WordTech Editions), which is available through Amazon, and in 2021 he published another collection, When the Spirit Moves Me (Wipf & Stock), which consists of spiritually-themed poems and is also available through Amazon. In 2023, he published his third collection, Mother Mourning (Wipf & Stock), again, available on Amazon. His iPhone is his primary poetry notebook, and he hopes his use of technology to craft this ancient art remains fruitful.