In the Early Morning in the Cypress Grove

The man has announced we cannot go on

          no longer like we do. Say goodbye to the bells I

                    waiting in the station long time for your call.

          President Lincoln freed the slaves

in less time it takes you tell me how/how not.

          How warped these carnation rays to the fairly

                    full moon misting to once I remember black

          your hair 'round the cloud-tipped spires of your mind

when I look down at my heart.

          It all topples in a bucket of blueberries too sweet

                    much too for pie. You might have to stare

          long distance past the mountains rising up

'round my valley to ever find me again. That gone

          goodbye but what delirious elm shall I do?

                    Without you the world's the same sad strum.

          You imagine the orchestra wild but here

a man who can without you barely hold a tune.

          Good on the kazoo. For which you will not

                    return never who would? Was a land some time

          hard in brown & green. All the things you said

to me I wish I could recite. Dark eyes.

          What little distance enormous between us.

                    Winter in the air still fall. Unendingly here

          this inescapable & the last to admit

how I must've seemed through the whole

          carnival 'til we got to the riverbank. Fireside.

                    I draw a circle around me only you can enter.

          Those days in bed we never had talking

Philip Guston fireflies loving cake hotness

          the war what it means to find in another

                    yourself but brighter & alive.

          Now only winter. Nothing until buds

on the white trees whiten my forgetfulness.

          Every tongue on earth will speak your name

                    from now until the overture is buried

          they singing Jairan to the end of it or near

the end. Nothing as you know ever really

          only that the Allegheny becomes the Ohio.

                    All the questions then after

          the horoscopes I can see you still from the corner

in the corner of my heart doing all. Over

          over in the most perfect gauze of darkness.

                    Bells are ringing somewhere in the city you live.

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Copyright © 2011 Michael Schiavo All rights reserved
from Fourteen Hills
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission