Two Poems from Seeing Things
by George Amabile
“RETROGRAM”
In Memoriam: J. M. Y.
If I could write you a letter
it would be drenched with nostalgia,
remembering our failed attempts
to organize the world’s chaos, with words
awake and on the march, like a biological
imperative, and that look you had,
of bright mischief when you pushed buttons, edges,
toppled icons and popped the baby balloons
of common sense, your voice
like a wind from the north
brisk, but not blustery, all day.
We talked away the small hours too,
raiding and sacking everything
we had ever read, on the frontiers
of exhaustion, but when the sun came up
we walked out into the city, refreshed
as though we had slept and dreamt it.
“RIFF”
I’m sitting on a park bench, in the dark.
The river is asleep in its glistening skin
of lights, and all the sails are furled.
A leaf rocks down and floats
on the grass. I pick it up.
It has the branching shape of a tree
inside it, or a river system,
or the arteries and veins in my hand,
or the first word no one remembers
that split and split and split again
into hundreds of languages
that change the air we breathe into sense,
or song. I look up. Across the water
fireflies pulse among the stars.
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Seeing Things is George Amabile’s fourteenth book. His poetry collection The Presence of Fire won the CAA award and his novel Operation Stealth Seed won the Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction. His short story collection Small Change and his poetry collections Martial Music and Dancing, with Mirrors were all awarded the Bressani Literary Prize. His poetry, fiction and non-fiction have also appeared in over a hundred anthologies, magazines, journals and periodicals in the USA, Canada, Europe, England, Wales, South America, Australia, and New Zealand.
* * *
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