The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Michael Salcman
Dante’s Lake In a small mirror nailed at the end of a darkened hall,
its bright silver blackened by the air that gave it life,
I see reflected the smallest part of what I am—
the picture yes but not the noise, as if the eye were all. In Como, where Dante’s lake laps the sage
and the night air smells of iodine,
I recall remembering the price of forgetting, the wage I’d gladly pay in dropping you this line. It’s late; the moony waters drown memory in a gilded frame where your voice recedes. I smell the heat of torches set to burning weeds, time stopping in the hallways of my brain.
The circle closes. If only you had come to kiss away the tears,
wipe my face and dry them years ago.
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