Thursday, October 22, 2015

Mary di Michele: Four Poems



                        Evening Musing
                                    (after Umberto Saba)

Moon rise.

In the street it’s still day
                                                             though dusk’s fast descending.

The young don’t notice the light fading,
                                                                                    they’re intent on their careers.

They have no idea about death yet
                                                                        in the end it’s what helps them to live.


***


            Georgia All Over the World

Though she had never been to the South
and her family was Yankee on both sides…

there was a woman who so loved
songs with Georgia in them

she told her husband she wanted
to name their daughter, Georgia;

midnight train to… ,… on my mind,
rainy night in… Georgia,

but other arms reached out to him.
An imaginary child, her Georgia.


 ***



            Buddha Nature

Dogs are the ones
with Buddha nature while we
anxiously grasp

at nothingness, losing our grip
on the end of a very long leash


***


            Turning 30 Twice Over

Yukio Mishima swore he’d die young,
He wanted to leave a beautiful

corpse. Still alive at forty-five
he committed seppuku.

It was the age, the Sixties
feared the thirties. At thirty

something you got over it,
and now that you approach thirty

twice over, not a corpse yet
no longer beautiful,

you have stopped
reading Mishima.



 A version of "Turning 30 Twice Over" has been published previously in CVII.




Mary di Michele is an Italian-born Canadian poet and novelist. Her most recent poetry book (her 10th), The Flower of Youth (ECW Press, 2011), is a collection of poems about the great writer and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini. This book was shortlisted for the 2012 A.M. Klein prize for poetry. Mary di Michele is a member of the collaborative poetry group Yoko's Dogs whose first book, Whisk, was published by Pedlar Press in 2013.
... about  Mary di Michele  ....  about Yoko's Dogs  

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