Uncrossed stations of the season

Silence Wearing Its Sneakers

The greenhouse sails the eucalyptus across
the meadow where a spring of sun leaks light
along a drying copse of withered lupine.

The shadow of a hawk hunts everything
it touches, snakes gophering on polished
vinyl bellies, young rabbits testing the world.

Somehow the new season has come in
a side door left ajar since last year,
a door so very few of us ever notice.

Winter candles cease chanting hopeless
hymns of hope, flowers wax worryless
obscuring black wicks and spent wishes.



In the deep channel, ships pass iced
in light, disturbing water’s reluctant
forgiveness when the mist hides all.

A starflung moon buffs a sleeping
owl’s wing and brushes the still limb,
silence wearing its feathered sneakers.

Do not concern yourself with day,
with night, the uncrossed stations of
the season for it matters little now.

Stand instead and take the air that
is given you, the greenhouse sailing
across the meadow, for it is enough.

Joseph Gallo
May 11, 2011

Through the slow hours

Cuddlology

It is mid-afternoon and we sail a sofa
through the slow hours, after mowing,
or washing the car, walking dogs we don’t
have, fixing leaky hardware or tending
to some minor caulking around grouted
tile we’ve yet to finish extending along
the rest of a counter or foyer. Thus we lie,
side by side, me behind you in faded denim
shorts with shredded white wisps of fray
brushing against the skin of your legs where
my hand smoothes settled acres of girlflesh
become woman-summered gardens, supple
and ripe for tending with care and adoration.



We doze in a napping wheel spun with
brief dreams fit for such laze and letting
go, the pleats of our paisley breath falling
in measure to a kitchen clock around the
corner we are not even aware of. Songbirds
bring us back and we do not move, remaining
instead this way knowing such afternoons
may never come again and there is yet time
before this one slips into what evening brings.

Joseph Gallo
May 9, 2011