Something other than itself

Blessed are those whose work is presence:
dogs by the sea so joyful they're teachers,
donkeys who move like little mothers,
people so strong they risk being kind.
~Barry Spacks

Herebeing

As far I fail to achieve what is not mine to have achieved,
I rise up from some small corner of a sea, an improbable
figure, run backwards, arcing into high blue with quillwater
winging its way down to settle as a cloud against a wet sky.

Shall I merely walk around this then? Stub my club foot
upon some squared-off block of unapplied dyslogic so
that I might sing my craven decry before all that conspires
to ignore me in this glass forest of tinderfelled houses?



None of this makes sense, I get that. It wasn’t supposed to.
It is malversed viscera in search of form and shape and
purpose as something other than itself and it has failed.
There are few things as kind as a stilling cessation.

At the shore, a retriever teaches us that the tide will be
thrown out of sight only to return like a bone for burial.
In time, what is dry will be wet will be dry yet again.
I will sit here and be with it like a stubborn mother.

Joseph Gallo
January 29, 2014

The true makers of this world

Gardenance

A petal came to my window today,
windborne bougainvillea hummingbird
circled twice to settle on a light sill of sun.

Are not the invisible things that make
their presence known by how they affect
the visible the true makers of this world?

Iron at the core of every breath, fire in
the heart of a glacier, the rose within
the stirring of every sleepless caldera.

Should a petal come to your window,
let it root in your notice, seed your swift
gaze, sprawl along your green keeping.

Joseph Gallo
January 12, 2014

To the end of your thirst

Woman With Apples

In this moment, she is holding apples out
in front of her. Nowhere else in the entire
universe are these made, red ones with the
starry lightpeel of Antares, duskfall set in
scarlet Martian blush, perfect lips rouged
and pursed on the cover of a valentine card.

In this moment, the sun is all hers and it holds
her completely in adoration, seeding a smooth
glaze of lavish bronze upon her skin as if she
were a diurnal moon cast up into vast blue arcs
skied with the broad passage of summer across
the deep blond silence of the gilding season.



Inside her, given seeds that make no promise
without hope, no hope without the failing wing
that falls into some bright corner of the sea, no
sea that will not envelope her in eclipsing totality,
no envelopment that will not release what emerges
from wingless reef when fin takes feather to arise.

It is for her this season will bend to behold her,
give itself over to her unerring will, push what
stirs beneath into what blossoms above. When
she holds out red apples, you must take them into
your mouth for all that came before has delivered
them now to your feasting, to the end of your thirst.

Joseph Gallo
September 18, 2013

All we ever keep

In all the universe, few things are given such brevity as that of a human life. ~Aucassin Verdè

Starloss

In the end, it is all we ever keep.
Everything evades us. The bee that
kept the flower, the wren that lost
the egg, the day that misplaced its
star all fled to a saddening dusk that
gently laps like a blanket of salt.

Would this keep these kisses I have saved
for you? From their hungered press onto
your patient lips? My hands from finding
their only purpose aside your nimbus hips?
Morning from throwing itself against rocky
dreams we must abandon to embrace it?

The doll’s shoe, the flung ring, the hours
we meant to share with those we never
shared them with. There are ladders that
reach up yearning for the night to take them,
lift them from their sidelain sullenness and
launch them up, up, into the cold bright slurry.



What we give we keep; what we take we delay
in returning like a borrowed book one promises
to replace onto a waiting shelf teeming with
wonders unimagined, moments others might
strike in curious happenstance by a troubled
sea that worries itself on the backs of monarchs.

As everything evades us, nothing eludes.
For we are forged in the violent hearts of
stars and everything that was ours will be
ours again to lose and let go, to radiate out
into the burning cold of having once been.
In the end, this, this is all we ever keep.

Joseph Gallo
January 6, 2014