CAT UNDER THE MOON

I remember
when I was completely happy,
like a cat under the moon.

But the filtered light of time
is indifferent,
and the same shadows
that give depth to moonlight,
channel sorrow
to a tender soul.

If I didn't have the poetry
of her joy to take hold of my heart,
then the tormenting pain of loss,
which grips like a magnet,
would be unfathomable,
much like a world
never graced with her presence.

Although Florine was anything
but a simple woman,
it was her elegant simplicity
and rare spiritual contentment
that made her complex and beguiling,
like a Zen garden
unaffected by the changing seasons.

Hers was a world of wonderment…
at the exhilarating power
of her thoroughbred
beneath her,
or the serene beauty of a butterfly
or a garden rose.

We all have our moments,
wonderful moments,
but rather than just passively wait
for them to happen,
she created her own,
with gusto, until she breathed
every inch of air.

Her existence not only
gives meaning to my own,
it lasts forever
in all that is beautiful.

-JOHN PISCATELLA

IN MY POETRY OF DREAMS

Dreams come to me,
as does my poetry.
And inside each,
as in a kaleidoscope,
variegated colors
overlap and overflow,
as does time,
where seconds are years
and years are lifetimes.

In my vision quest,
I share space
with singular souls;
bygone lives
that once cast
velvet shadows
on the earth
and now find sanctuary
in the rhetoric of reflection
and the magic
of primordial perception
in my poetry of dreams.

If dreams die
in the middle of a phrase,
so does the depth of love
and the clarity
of our yearnings.

Images that are erased
without a trace
between the start
and the finish
are like muted children
who will never hear
the sound
of their own voice.

In my poetry of dreams,
heartbeats of ethereal light
can vanish suddenly
in the stillness
of the night.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

MELODY- WOMAN

With pen instead of piano,
I write variations to a life-song
that move as my words move,
effortlessly, like my melody-woman
in this poem who whispers
across the page and
sings to my heart.

Our music is jazz-like,
often muted, never entirely
predetermined or improvised,
but always with the depth
and beauty of consummate harmony.

The subtle but irresistible voice she brings me
is the foundation for my tone poems;
lyrical conversations with her
that are open like a turned page
for all to see and listen.

They can be neither
re-created nor re-invented,
embellished nor ornamented.
They are her reflections.
Like the image of her face
etched within her mirror,
they are beyond evanescence.

Beethoven took three years to write
over thirty variations of a composition
considered by his peers
to be predictable and unimaginative,
and by Beethoven to be trite and insignificant.

Undisturbed by time and captivated
by the elegance of simplicity,
I write endless variations
around my melody woman,
who was not only unforeseen and original,
but relevant and extraordinarily priceless.

If I had a contest
with a phantom Beethoven
to create the perfect composition,
I would surely lose, and so would he.

The crowning score
was written almost 60 years ago,
not in Vienna, but in a small town
in northern Maine,
without benefit of my efforts
or his genius.

Florine.

© JOHN PISCATELLA