A CHRISTMAS LETTER TO FLORINE

We had our moment,
an incredible moment,
and our hours,
magical hours
where our eyes
mirrored our hearts,
but not nearly enough days
to make months or years
last forever.

I keep looking,
each day, every day,
but it is too late
to find your face
anywhere but in my dreams
or under the moons bright circle.

The world without you
is not magic to me anymore
and is beyond understanding,
but my secret center
still overflows
with the joy and wonderment
of your poetry.

While some souls
have no music in them,
others are steeped in harmony.
You are one of the others,
as am I; our voices echoed together
everywhere and nowhere,
now and forever.

Although your absence
will always sadden my sunsets,
how can I not be eternally grateful
for having loved and been loved,
from dawn to dusk,
in the hightide of this lifetime,
and beyond.

My life, because of you,
is not just an amassment of yesterdays
and dreams undreamed,
it is filled with hope for my tomorrows.

Even so, oh, what I wouldn’t give
for the joy of being with you...
one minute more.

Thank you baby.

Merry Christmas,

JOHN

© JOHN PISCATELLA

GIVERS AND TAKERS

I have lived my life
by the philosophy
that the world is divided
between those who are givers
and those who are takers.

This simplistic doctrine
has brought balance to my life
as it enables me to assess character
based on substance, not delusion.
Unlike a mirage,
everything in my universe
appears exactly as it is,
and that which lacks genuineness,
may linger awhile,
but is destined to vanish
into yesterday.

I know who I am,
where I want to be,
and who I want to be with.
I choreograph my world
with people who are not
only generous in spirit
with purified intentions,
but have a refined perception
of the power of friendship.

Mine are not fair-weather friends.
They journey with me
through all persuasions,
and unlike the martial artist
whose sequence of events
always begins with a defensive action,
they are in complete harmony
with themselves and remain open
to the uniqeness of the world
around them.

Florine was a giver,
as was my mother.
Those who have walked with me
to the mountain
have given me the gift of
strength to persevere.

Sweetness, not sadness,
saturates my soul
and has opened a
a door to life
that leads me,
and my true friends,
to the garden.

In my garden,
planted with and for my baby,
goodness is abundant,
and regardless of the season,
ripe fruit is easily
plucked from the trees.

© JOHN PISCATELLA


.

I WRITE BECAUSE I WRITE

I write because I write.
Because I have a thirst
to fill the void left in my heart
that was never there before
the day my lady died.

I have an impelling need for her love.
But, since love is stronger than death,
the love I have inside me
needs a place to go,
and has found a home with her
in her perennial diary,
written by me as she sleeps.

With each word that I write,
I can still taste her love
on my lips and in my mouth,
and like a fine, aged wine,
her bouquet lingers
long after the swallow
and becomes a mystery
reserved to itself.

Memories can easily trickle away with time,
but the fiery reflection from Florine's eyes
that mirrored the light from her heart,
has permanently etched
her spirit in all those
who were fortunate enough to
have known her.

She walked so fast she seemed immune to gravity.
She negotiated our world with fluidity
and was complete unto herself in every way.
She rode the moment like she rode
her thoroughbred in the rain,
but I am the one drenched to the bone
with memories of love and laughter
that never wavered
for the greater part of my lifetime.

I will never tire of coming and going into her life.
Telling her story fulfills my journey
and has become the sole purpose of my life.
When I write, I don't have to imagine
the world without her.
I can visit her whenever I please
to escape the perils of actuality,
and to savor her enlightened
sense of the world.

If she wasn't real
I would have made her up.
So I close my eyes,
drift away,
and talk to her.

I write because I write.

Because I am compelled to.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

MY LADY OF THE MOUNTAIN

The early morning was golden
in the ancient citadel
of Machu Picchu,
the lost city of the Incas,
as once were her smoldering embers
that danced into dust
and now lay in stoney quiet
in a pocket-sized vessel
adjoined to my heart
like tendrils to a garden wall.

Our wondrous journey together
started twelve years shy of
half a century ago,
and our unconscious ritual of passage
remains alive on love
more fragrant than wine,
and silent promises
inscribed forever in our destinies.

The morning mist
rising from the Urubamba River
a distant 8,000 feet below,
floated like the mythical condor of Peru,
from the Andean peaks of mother earth
to the upper world,
pausing briefly to escort us
up Wyna Picchu,
the young mountain
that overlooked the remnants
and the mystery
of the Inca Empire.

Whatever anxiety I had
about traversing the arduous,
straight-up stairs
carved into the mountainside,
was quickly replaced
with a surge of elation,
and I was entranced
by the provocative power
of the unknown.

In many places, to slip is to die,
but if I reject
change and challenge out of fear,
and if I am not resolute
in my battle against insignificance,
life would pass me by
like a breeze out of yesterday.

For me, but especially my Babe,
who lived and loved life
with profound exhilaration,
the alternative is unacceptable.
With no music left to dance too,
one can easily slip into invisibility,
a fate tantamount to suffocation
by permanent absence.

I climbed on my mission,
until I couldn't climb any higher,
and we were one with the clouds.
It was time to weep without witness.
Instead, I inhaled her essence
along with the purity of her soul
in the rarefied air,
and smiled at her
from the far side of paradise.

A wild orchid is
attached to the wall
on the highest peak of the mountain.
Nearby, a shrub blooms
with multi-coned shaped flowers
that are reddish pink at the base
and white at the top.
Both look down on a miniature version of Machu Picchu
and the sacred valley below.

Florine's ashes,
so deeply treasured and significant
because they are rich with the fragrance
of a quality life lived
with savage passion,
lie at the base of each plant
and render a quiet beauty
to the flowers and the mountain
that never existed before.

The earth took her spirit back
with infinite tenderness.
Her silent shadow,
pressed against the morning flowers,
melted into the immovable sky.

My love flew free
in the Andes Mountains
of South America,
and now lives through eternity
with my lady of the mountain.

© JOHN PISCATELLA