Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem, every Thursday.
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Sunrise Over Gerrit’s House

 

                           –For John Giglio

 

The crows arise to your caw

And a healthy piss on the lawn,

Day dawns on the neck

Of a marsh crane, cultivating

At the barrier of life

And death—some kind of

Golden elixir trickster

The great clod burdens

With forms, morphing

Clouds over the ocean—

You need not ring the doorbell,

Coming and going with

Sages and saints who gather

Free from worry, where

Wild vegetation grows not

To be sold on sidewalks

Of crowded boutique market–

A child lets go a tiny boat

Lo and behold there’s

No place it won’t float

Keep to the unadorned

Embrace simplicity

The child seems to say

If there is any eternal

Nature in the universe

It is here in light’s first

Glimmer, close your eyes

It’s gone, day lingers on

With the leafing tree,

Buzzing bees, the ache

Of old knees—ah, memories

Swarm, why complain?

See the sun, remember home,

Throw a stone to show you

The way to draw inferences

From one instance—all streams

Flow to the sea and the sea

Receives them like a drop

Of benevolence, pity we mortals–

On the other side of sky

A crack—crawl through,

Suffer the world’s scorn

With an open, humble mind—

A flint spark then

Mark an end as we climb

Upwards, inquiring about

The source and what is lost

To sight like a trawler

Into open water—into

The growing dark we won’t

Soon forget, this the infinite,

This loose lips, this the

Barrier of time wasted

Stops us mid-stride—

The wind moves on

Cold wings, we remain

Submerged in deception—

Where there is seeking

So serious we have come

To take ourselves, night

Cries over you and your verse,

In daylight we recall dreams

Of you, telling flowers’ names,

What pond in the woods,

As above below what

Trees grow–the journey

You travel skies, waterways

Continuous as seasons,

The sound of rain in

Wind on waves amongst

High peaks and galaxies, safe

And unharmed no longer

Growing old, freshened

As each morning blossoms,

While we make poems

Preying on peoples’ ills

The past no longer

Rushes by, there is

No time for you, no

Past, present, future,

A continuum all once

And never, the sky

Dotted with old stars

The new being born

And whose silly heart?

The graveyard’s too lonely

For the likes of you—

Morning rays cannot

Reach deep enough–no

good company to keep,

Your heart-mind’s too refined

For dead meat, at birth

You were endowed with

Divine inner nature

Then devoted yourself

To a continuous awakening

With all colors of dream,

The ether between–

 

Joseph Torra is a novelist, poet, memoirist, and editor. His novels include My Ground Trilogy: (Gas Station, Tony Luongo, My Ground), They Say, The Bystander’s Scrapbook, What It Takes, What’s So Funny. Poetry books include Keep Watching the Sky, After the Chinese and Time Being. Memoirs: Call Me Waiter and Who Do You Think You Are? Reflections of a Writers Life…. He edited the journals lift magazine, Let the Bucket Down, a Magazine of Boston Area Writing, and the poetry of Stephen Jonas.

Arts Fuse 2021 interview with Joseph Torra.

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Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx