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.
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