Vincent Casaregola
Death, I Fear, Is Always in the Middle
Death, I fear, is always in the middle,
the mediator with a stopwatch,
ultimate arbiter of all disputes,
referee of every temporal game,
judge of each contest or debate--
it is the fog-shrouded river valley
between these distant ridges, where
only strange tree-tops emerge from mist
and stranger sounds, cries or prayers,
and between us in the moment of passion,
the space our bodies transit for love,
arms open to embrace, lips to kiss,
yet eyes closed, afraid to witness death--
a cosmic mystery, a black hole,
the closer we embrace, the dearer love,
the deeper the vastness we encounter,
great abyss, deep gravity of loss--
I caress you, so touch mortality,
sense the passing, moment by moment,
of sense, to soul, to silence or rest,
so hold tight, love, and know the cost
that Death is always in the middle.
“Mystic Chords of Memory”
As a child, she was taken
to re-enactments every spring
and summer, whether or not
she really wished to see the old war
fought again, now by men middle-aged,
whom she’d seen more often in feed caps.
Hot July sun made her pale skin
prickly with the coming burn
in those days before all wore sunscreen,
and his hand, rough from working
on tractors or trucks, calloused
from grasping this or that wrench too long,
would pull her along, through high grass
and thistles that stung her bare legs.
The gunpowder made a blue smoke,
made her throat hurt and eyes tear up,
but at least she could see the horses,
graceful, with brown flanks glistening
in the sun, prancing and snorting
under the reins, impatient to play—
he’d wink at her when he caught her
smiling at the horses, knowing he’d won.
It all comes back last week, opening an old box
secreted in the corner of her closet—
inside, a variety of ancient relics, among them
a small scented square, wrapped in old paper,
the soap he’d bought her in the sutler’s tent
from the smiling old women in period dress.
Opening the paper, she smells history
along with the faint scent of lilac.
It propelled her, once more, across the continent,
to wait again in the living room, part museum,
part tomb, where the collected objects
arrange themselves for any story
she might want to tell. It takes him
twenty minutes to get back from the bathroom,
the walker clicking before him,
announcing his coming, his finality.
Awkward in the evening light, with sofa cushions
musty and faded, she leans back,
trying to talk about the stroke, the therapy,
and even, God forbid, the possibility
he might move East with her.
He nods, winks, knows something,
or thinks he does, knows at least
that the wink meant something once.
His head droops, then, and he dozes,
while she waits, watching the sunset
reflected in the polished stock
of the musket hanging from the mantel,
in case anyone needs to fight the war again.
Present Imperfect
Tense with unreason,
tense with a reason, with causes
beyond complete control,
we scuttling and rippling through
space and time, we about to die
of shame, or from fear of being shamed,
salute you, you who gape from stands
where you watch the show
of our complete imperfections.
The fault not in our stars, perhaps,
but if in ourselves, in our hidden
selves, our inner biology, the fault,
dear Brutus, in our genes that unfit us
for whatever norm projects itself
across the screens of culture—look,
how sad that she’s so fat or he’s so short,
how awkward for them, with awkward gait,
how do they manage to compete, to complete
a life worth living in the shadows
of perfection and the light of truth.
Reality of cells and tissues, of flows
of blood and bile, humorous, humorless
through the daily tides, the ebbs and flows
of living on sidelines or in unwanted spectacle.
We salute the powers, imperial, of image
and icon, of the raw slender effigies of style,
of the hulking, bulking musculature of power,
that leave us sidelined, sidestepped on
sidewalks, on paths to somewhere we cannot go
or if we could, would not be admitted at the gate.
Celestial powers, cloaked fates, measure us
and our time, find our measure not mete,
our form not fitting the function of good life,
so we find the room’s corners, flower its walls,
preferring invisibility, hiding imperfection,
tense, against the wall, about to be shot . . . a glance.
Specific Gravity
It must be the bones, endless
and fragmented, some bleached
in relentless angry sun,
some mineral-darkened with age,
and most ground to fine powder
that may irritate the eye and skin.
Over time, the bones increase
the planet’s weight, its mass,
though no expert or agency
confirms this transformation;
still, our globe takes on the burden
gradually distorting its shape,
infecting its depths.
We sense but cannot name
such increasing gravity
pulling us earthwards, calling us down,
but old Zia Annuziata,
whom the children called “Strega A,”
would stare sadly at the floor,
her sun-browned, wrinkled hands folded
in the lap of her faded black dress,
and in her crackling, aged voice,
say softly, but with certainty,
“the bones, tonight, lie heavy in the earth.”