Four Further Poems in March

An Aura of Gracefulness

Upend the cornucopia, my dearest Flora,

Now that we all are confined for weeks on end,

Here in Italy and other peninsula

Or on islands of sequestration, the blend

Of fresh vegetation and preserved

Exotic fruits are more than we deserve;

Yet still shower us with mercies, an aura

Of gracefulness in a world of grief, the curved

Magnanimity of your breasts, the great restorer

Of our optimism, embrace our souls, and serve

To warm the iciness of dying blood that flows

Forever from the melting glaciers of the north,

And we absorb your blessing—free to sally forth

Again, as living beings do when they awaken

From the endless winter and the drought-worn bracken

Of our brains, they seek to hongi nose to nose.

A Winter Evening By My Window

There was always sadness in her eyes,

The woman who walked her dog at night through slush,

In dreams I could not understand. Snow flies

Against the window in my room, all lush

With books my father bought for me. The pages

Turn themselves, and then the words grow still

Inside my mind, whose meanings still outrage

All sense, as in a dream, where the snow ever will

Fall to silence inquiries outside. She never speaks

As she passes in the street with her dog, and never

Watches where she goes, though I hold on for weeks,

Then months and years, wondering why the weather

Stays the same, a blizzard under yellow lights,

A dog who trudges through the slush, a darkness

Yet to be untold, a woman’s voice, a wind that bites

Through the window, the unread books of sadness.

A Calm Delusion in the Eye of a Storm

You cure, you go, you disappear, and I

Will perish, too, if not this year, then soon

Enough. The winds that blow into the eye

Of the coronal storm, the calm delusion—moon

Floating on a perfect ocean, sky

Debilitated like a child’s disease,

More frightened than in pain: they swoon

Who fear the punctuated hum, the squeeze

So gentle on the heart that will not ease, the hymn

That lingers on the slow horizon, the seas

That heave against lost harmonies, a rune

Without decipherment or borealis,

A prayer unuttered in a blood-soaked tallis:

You lie unmourned until the end of time,

Heaven’s eternal eye too blurred by shame.

The Shower of Toxic Waters

We stood there, all of us, swaying on the precipice,

Looking into eternity, not like some vast saturnine

Ring or clunky whirligig, for this

Was something infinitely darker.  Ice

Crystals in the endless cavern, no nine

Man’s Morris danced out of mind, no slice

Of history’s overcooked apple pies,

Not even patchwork organisms in their prime.

We stood and swayed, made dizzier by the hour,

All waiting to die but afraid to make the leap

Of lemmings, for we have been unschooled and cower

In the ignorance of our modernity, so sleep-

Walked towards the great abyss, where the shower

Of toxic waters waits for us. We keep

Our peace but never harvest what we reap.