Paul Vangelisti

from “Solitude”

Rarely comforting and mostly at night

as no one’s listening, the birds are still,

jasmine abloom and those invitations

daring what little there is of sleep.

It was an August, though, too cool for jasmine,

blossoms more a scented memory

than some provocation lingering into fall.

Bitter or not, the dark straddles a fear of

small closings, small thoughts hardly sustaining

much beyond the sound of pencil scratching paper.

These, of course, just notions bereft of scented

blossoming and foggy mornings after

such dark nights. Nowhere left to go but

tease those fresh shoulders with a taste of winter. 

And then at dawn the river grows wide

and shallower with few trees and bushes,

and in the faint light a salty odor.

When was he last here, why such low water,

as the boat drifts toward the horizon.

Must have been almost summer when the current

first rushed him out under the broad sky’s

dazzle and the wheeling birds. Now quite dim

as dawn feels suspended as the hope of

ever seeing that face, those eyes again.

He strokes a few more times and waits for what

is the noise of surf somewhere in the

weathered light. He strokes again as the sun must

be edging nearer the end of his song.

© Paul Vangelisti

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