Work

by Paul Vangelisti

Panoply of leaves, shadow of scant melody.

Rime of a certain kind in uncertain light.

Lost, of course, how else might such a house breathe.

With a little luck to beggar the question.

Scanter, notwithstanding this graceless time.

O memory of garbage trucks rolling downhill.

High in a tender sky some years ago.

See the eye continue to rhyme regardless.

And what’s left but an alibi for dreaming.

Half the hours you keep snowing in sleep.

Rhyming the dark this far and no further.

The the at the most sudden heart of things.

Those tears and tears in the savage firmament.

As long as your willful green’s in the picture.