All that can claim this day

The Day Gone Now

The day gone now, the sun hushing in the west.
All that can claim this day for triumph has been
lain to waste and its vanquished soldiers buried
in the dusk. Did you ride a fleet of blue horses, set
their manes afire with speed and forested concourse?
Did you stroll the evening lakeside, search dark
waters for unreflectable meanings in the shallows?

There are pans and plates hissing with the night’s
imminent nourishment and your lips are pursed to
impart them. They will not meet mine and I will go
this whole day on this side of the world without.
No matter that I may eat red berries in the morning
and black ones at sunfall, spring will not confer a
succulence sufficient as can be found in the vintage of
your lips with their bursting press of sugar and youth.



As clouds gather at the feet of the settled dragon, windows
find closing and drapes embrace what light may be found
in a set candle. Sigh and suppered rest remove boots trodden
with fields and all the mudded wonders that travel a single day.

This is what we live for. One can walk the quieting streets
and feel communion behind unbolted doors, hearth-gathering
in the human family, tales and sagas yet to be recounted
and lived. I hope this day has been for you what any day
can be, filled with the love of and for another, graced
with lasting measures of music and whisper, respite from
the seemingly endless bearing of unchampionable yokes.

My day yet lies before me, the hill crested with pennants
that have claimed neither victory nor defeat, blank as
church glass at midnight. I will move out into it and feel
the ground move about the sun, a sun that has left your
eyes to wear down my shoulders, to insist I carry it gladly
through the long suffering sky with courage and the lack of it.

I will do this because, like you, I can do nothing less
than live on to give this day my unspoken name.

Joseph Gallo
May 6, 2007

Silence served with love

Cooking For One

First the tomatoes, setting them out side by side, red bolides
filled with the blood of an Italian sun, slicing them through
a silent galliard strumming in my head, the lute-shaped cutting
board coarse along the edges, the rounds dancing and falling
in cinque passi precision, fretting two white moths curtsying
on window curtains spring moonrise takes no trouble parting.

Next, a small wedge of cheese willing to yield what age does
to each of us, something able to sit unflinching before a silver
cunning as the blade moves through neatly as with a purpose
that presses tears from cured olives to pool in a small plate set
aside to hold a divine stigmata of red vinegar for the bread
unwrapped from paper that only hours before rose in a crucible
of brick and fire, in the leavened resurrection of all we find holy
in the fields and the grainless labors of our own uprooted hands.



I do this because I matter this night, because I know each small
action I perform will culminate in my setting a place for you
across the table, because I will do so knowing you will not come.
Lamb on the bone succulent as an old testament, savory as saxophones on a Saturday night, a fat candle placed midway for some cruel ambience that will lose itself in what we might have been together.

I will sit and finish. I will sit a while, drink tapwater from cut glass, finish some more. There will be food enough for tomorrow, but I will be finished. I will ask the you that might have been here if there is anything else you want, anything else you might desire. I will pull out a small notebook and read something to curry your absent ear. It will be a dessert of silence served with love and left to settle the empty room. I will clean up and be filled by that very love.

Joseph Gallo
May 2, 2007