WOODROW SLEEPS

Pleasure there is in watching Woodrow sleep,
in sensory purgatory
between sanctity and sauciness,
where mandatory moments of curiosity
are split in two and put on hold
between the toss and the turn.

Such is my luck, to witness
the understated elegance
of closed eyelids and retractable claws,
and soft paws undulating silently
in the fur of the night.

But never be fooled
by silence and quietude.
Defer to a tufted tail
that is an extension of a backbone,
or ears that can move independently.

Beneath this serene surface
lies a pernicious time-bomb,
in-between the tick
and the relentless tock,
one leap away
from the ancestral hunt
and the timelessness of Africa.

A LIFE WITH STORIES

Hers was a multilayered life
with stories,
and thanks to Florine,
so too is mine.

I rode a bike to the peak
of a pristine mountaintop,
somewhere in Germany,
on a sunshiny September morning
in a companionless bike lane
aside an unbroken road.

A speck of a shadow,
in the early morning stillness
a mile down the road,
had little meaning before
mutating into a machine
and invading my space,
like a coyote
closing in on its prey.

It happened quickly,
but methodically,
in staggering slow motion.
An approaching car
wrathfully changed lanes
to trespass in mine,
until I was face to face
with violent eyes
and the stuff of bad dreams.

Before the car could make contact,
I hurriedly swerved my bike off the road,
gracelessly tumbling
into the low tide
of an abandoned field,
like a Chaplin scene
in a silent movie.

Out-stretched on the earth,
I was too shaken to feel anything,
not even bewilderment.
No one saw me
except for that phantom shadow
in the distance,
moving down the road.

I will never know
the story behind the story, that day,
but have learned,
from Florine's unparalleled life,
to fully appreciate the passage
from one day to another.

All I know is:
I keep riding,
I ride to keep riding
beyond the mountain,
in search of sunlight
and the poetry
of a life with stories.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

BIRTHDAY DREAMS

Birthday dreams
Burning in your birth month

Not in Paris or Madrid
Or even in imaginary landscapes

Beneath yesterday's rain
Above resurrected clouds
Of rose-bud whiteness

Not in Bali or Bangkok
Or the ivory sands of Africa

Ever forever in my heart

Florine

© JOHN PISCATELLA

AND THEN THERE WAS YOU

Things that go away
are not always meant to return,
but often they do
in the garden
where your story
is written and embraced
by both time and timelessness.

While you sleep
trees bloom to celebrate
the absolute otherness
of ambrosial spring mornings
and to atone for the undeniable
sameness of listless,
waxen winter afternoons.

Even in the murkiness of June,
you live in luminous earth.
Composted, summer gladness
oozes from you,
fresh with the morning dew.
You are the restless roots
of tireless trees.
The builder of sugary palaces
on sculpted limbs.
The clarity of fruit ready to explode
in the ecstasy of sunrise.

Who knows why an apple is an apple
when it could easily be a rose,
I suppose, like its cousin
the floribunda or tea rose or even a climber,
like the alabaster white 'Iceberg Rose'
atop the wrought iron trellis.

Or why, your beloved hydrangeas,
planted side by side with one voice,
are diverse in color,
as beautiful in difference
as a first and second child.

I love your apple tree from Israel,
not only for the clarity of the bloom
and for the globes of nectar
that float like celestial moons
on a moonless night,
but because it is a traveler like you,
at home in the poetic space
between worlds.
A true monument to a soul bouquet.

It shares a soothing shadow
and the early morning stillness
with a peach tree whose profile
has transformed into living art;
a delicately balanced mobile
of fruit destined for cobbler nirvana.

But who can forget the gnarled fig tree,
side-by-side with a hummingbird
bathing in the fountain,
both picturesque in silhouette.
Or the fattened fruit,
a pulse-beat away
from succulent ripeness
for both man and bird.

And then there is you.
The brightest light through the leaves.
The wind rippling across
clouds of white feathers.

Who can forget you.

© JOHN PISCATELLA