Poem-A-Day

Elegy: Shot List For An Art House Obsessive

by David Gonsalves

And what, after all, of jealousy

     the future of measurement

          a meadow that plunders the calendar

a day out of tolerance

     moon without memory

          wave after wave of oakleaf

blind eye at the edge of uncertainty

     free of what is often brilliant

          the liberation of liberation

a series of speckled rose buds

     the liveliness of even-tempered swallows

          even as protocol locks out the tide

knowing only weightless reassurance

     the need to avoid some staccato obstruction

          or fall into a featureless distance

footprints ravaged before the peat bog

     raw and inquisitive tapestries

          prelude to a dose of ambiguity

falling snow, the end of anniversaries

     the inability to understand the unrehearsed

          progression of last-ditch vanishing points

a jet stream as strange as it was simple

     glad that the body has no disregard

          a way to keep the sundial unmannered

twilight and the return of humility

     brief mastery of something delicate

          divine indifference made intelligible.

~

David Gonsalves should have been born in Nepal, but wasn't. Lives in a cave beside a river that flows both ways.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~