At the center of a boy

Octoberity

Wind scatters lark song across a dry October field.
Nothing will regather it as soundwaves bounce off an
invisible star unsettled in the middle of this arid season.
Even the islands are not where they should be, dislodged
from their moorings by the instability of discordant weather.

This might be a metaphor for love were it as barbed as a
reveille, were it thrown overboard like a lover from a balcony
too busy spilling hair to see the fixed and fusioned heart at
the center of a boy who will take a lifetime to misunderstand
that love is nothing like this, that love is everything like this.



Across the hilly bosom of the morning, oaks stand like shimmering
fonts pooled with sunlight as if dipping your hands in them might
absolve you of a week of green sin. Late monarchs wend their
graceless spasms of flight into something that becomes beauty in
spite of itself, something not unlike the dry field of a boy’s heart.

Joseph Gallo
October 20, 2007