Saturday, July 11, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Poem to a redhead
Your hair: 6
My vocabulary: 0
(after extra time)
There`s something biblically sinful
about the redness of your hair,
sumptuous,almost carnal.
Roget has failed me,
my PhD in bartalk insufficient.
I`m running out of midnights,
howling by the adjectival waterfall,
my image harvester run aground.
For you,I will be il tuo primitivo ,
a hewer of wood,a fisher of seas
and all that pagan stuff,
cavemannish in my wanting.
I move your name about my mouth,
your spell of seven syllables entrances,
I drift in dreamfilled sleep,
tracing the meander of your curls.
My vocabulary: 0
(after extra time)
There`s something biblically sinful
about the redness of your hair,
sumptuous,almost carnal.
Roget has failed me,
my PhD in bartalk insufficient.
I`m running out of midnights,
howling by the adjectival waterfall,
my image harvester run aground.
For you,I will be il tuo primitivo ,
a hewer of wood,a fisher of seas
and all that pagan stuff,
cavemannish in my wanting.
I move your name about my mouth,
your spell of seven syllables entrances,
I drift in dreamfilled sleep,
tracing the meander of your curls.
Piera, a torchsong
Piera
Piera holds court on a red, plastic chair
outside Bar Emilio,whiskeying the days along.
Her handbag a trove of his letters
and their marriage photographs,
dressed only in black, she mourns a man still living.
And her old beauty still there,
sallow skin disguising alcohol’s ravages.
Sunblonded ponytail,
exquisite hands and a knowing smile,
she rides the memory trapeze,
thinking only of Mauro and their ten years.
In her apartment on Via Bertola
shopwindow mannequins take his place
in the bedroom, kitchen and livingroom,
each dressed in his discarded clothes.
Each night she cooks him pesto
pours a glass of his favoured vino patria,
reads his letters in the waiting.
Brushes out her hair, for he likes it that way,
drifts away with Gigli and Jack Daniels,
waltzing the weddingsuited model.
Her widowed sister and Mauro
seldom remember.
Piera holds court on a red, plastic chair
outside Bar Emilio,whiskeying the days along.
Her handbag a trove of his letters
and their marriage photographs,
dressed only in black, she mourns a man still living.
And her old beauty still there,
sallow skin disguising alcohol’s ravages.
Sunblonded ponytail,
exquisite hands and a knowing smile,
she rides the memory trapeze,
thinking only of Mauro and their ten years.
In her apartment on Via Bertola
shopwindow mannequins take his place
in the bedroom, kitchen and livingroom,
each dressed in his discarded clothes.
Each night she cooks him pesto
pours a glass of his favoured vino patria,
reads his letters in the waiting.
Brushes out her hair, for he likes it that way,
drifts away with Gigli and Jack Daniels,
waltzing the weddingsuited model.
Her widowed sister and Mauro
seldom remember.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Friday
Clouds roam the bald fields,
the tractor cools under corrugated iron
and workclothes waltz the wind.
Dinnertime, in the town,
an unseen, unheard gong is answered.
The Central Bar Diner’s Club assembles,
every face rented or borrowed
from the sepia photographs
that meander the rough wall.
A pint called by thumb or wink –
the semaphore of the accepted –
a half-one cradled and hidden
in a work- horned hand.
Field talk and parish banter
flow as fluently as the Yellow River.
The first real food and friendship
since last Friday,
that fragile weft of belonging
unravelling after the hour.
A reassuring rattle of small coins
and the long smile of the
red-haired woman in the Post Office
diluting the italic rain,
shortening the home road.
Clouds roam the bald fields,
the tractor cools under corrugated iron
and workclothes waltz the wind.
Dinnertime, in the town,
an unseen, unheard gong is answered.
The Central Bar Diner’s Club assembles,
every face rented or borrowed
from the sepia photographs
that meander the rough wall.
A pint called by thumb or wink –
the semaphore of the accepted –
a half-one cradled and hidden
in a work- horned hand.
Field talk and parish banter
flow as fluently as the Yellow River.
The first real food and friendship
since last Friday,
that fragile weft of belonging
unravelling after the hour.
A reassuring rattle of small coins
and the long smile of the
red-haired woman in the Post Office
diluting the italic rain,
shortening the home road.
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