VOICES OF THE SAME POETRY

I might never begin
to begin to envision
infinite absence,
where
never and forever
return
like the dew
of a dawn
on my
day after day.

Silently evaporating
between
the silvery mist
underneath
the morning sun
and the variegated shadows
of merging memories
is a rare passion
that tantalized time
when timeless sweet things
were the simmering half
of a smoldering whole.

You lived your soul
as I live mine,
deeply intertwined,
like tendrils
on a garden wall.

But like a tea rose
that knows
it is not a floribunda,
I bloom alone
for you and me
on a single stem
with a solitary heart.

Everything that touched you
touches me,
like voices
of the same poetry
that carry me to you
beyond goodbyes and ashes
and the irresistible rhythm
of a wavering moon.

© JOHN PISCATELLA

THE SUNSHINE OF HER SMILE

I looked like myself,
but I wasn’t me anymore.

Beneath a melting surface
with no center
to sustain me,
something
both unknowable and familiar
seemed destined to disappear
between everything and nothingness.

In languid limbo
surrounded by hollow shade,
nothing but the inner light
from the love
of my life
could block out
the motionless shadows
of clenched sadness
and half-forgotten joys.

The sunshine of her smile,
etched deep inside
her soul and mine,
keeps me from falling
and is my sole connection
to the reconstruction of myself,
particle by particle,
cell by cell.

I have learned to move
according to the rhythm
of her life
and mine to come
with a singular heart
and the certainty
of uncertainty.

Destined by love
that endures beyond
our vanishing,
we return
to the very essence
of poetry,
side by side,
page by unwritten page.

© JOHN PISCATELLA