VASTATION

What about the polar lights
that touch earth.
I have seen them on my voyage.
Vivid is my ship.
Looking there
I found an iridescence
opening a chatter
between self and ether.
I found a shoreline.
I found a face.
An uncharted face.
What can be said of love.
That I saw a ray breaking through,
saw the night pouring down.
The sky speaks to me and says
you will find shards,
unattended joy, pieces of sorrow.
Will sail past hell to get here.
Like a match struck,
there is the flare
and the midnight around it.
When the world comes back
you’ll see a mound of earth
more dazzling than all the sea.
A blossom cutting cool air.
It’s all there in the cello
and the bow, the tree
and its croaking.
It’s all there in the soft tissue.
A musical flood.
The sky speaks to me
and says, I survived.
Says, there is this day
that can happen
when a face opens.
Now, that’s all I see.
I was happy to die
if it meant I could live.

THE BLOSSOM IS STRONGER THAN US

but to want the beauty of the hollyhock

Augustine sad, reading in the alcove

so much sand and wind with us all this time

so many bullets and boys crying mother before the weather

but why after all this nothing but the changing weather

playing the changes, the children

in the magnitude, love

in the horror, love

PETER GIZZI is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently, Now It’s Dark (2021), Sky Burial: New & Selected Poems (2020), and Archeophonics (2016).

Untitled (Kite), 2019 by Richard Kraft