The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Laura Manuelidis

EVENING WITH CLOUDS

They land in flocks, the wild geese
When water calms
And the blue-gray drift has settled its margin
Over the earth's mirror.
In contrast, a man only stands
Alone, in his own shadow.

Sit next to me now, as you once did
Out of your shadow.
Reach from the pale keys of your tapering fingers
The white felts struck secretly behind attending strings:
Flocks without shepherd.


ANON

She wants nothing as she walks
The wood is deep in rubble
It makes no difference now

For howls wind down her hoar
And through her heart stiff nettle
She wants nothing as she walks

Past music, the shape of voices
Spent—how the vast dream wanders—
It makes no difference now

If curtain lifts, stage naked
Or playbills left drowning in gutters
She wants nothing as she walks

Just to enter light's final pavilion—
Her paucity—a silence explicit
It makes no difference.           Now

Our muse is moss and bonny!
Old man, why do you sit there weeping?
She wants nothing where she walks.
It makes no difference now.


TO REST

Give me a purple finch upon my pine
A mockingbird loud in my chimney
Determined moth fighting against nightfall
—Beyond my pane—
All salt relieved of grief: