Latitudes
Here, the morning sky appears
like a mosaic of colored glass
assembled by the fonds of sabal
palms, then lightly polished and
pressed into a thin-set of biscayne
blue. Low clouds stretch in after-
glow across the horizon as if they
were lit from within and everywhere
there’s a gross profusion of blossoms
and tangled shoals of under-leaf,
enveloping a world still coveting
summer and overrun with scents
of fresh citrus, clove and a pleasurable
alchemy of salt mingled with the
damp tang of ash. Stranded here,
I’d gladly risk losing this artifice
of malarial light, and embrace a world
and weather in free fall, many miles
distant and weighted with darkness,
where bare boughs stand deep in
shadow and you can lose yourself
in sweater-cold air that is grizzled
with frost and woven like corn-
silk into the very fabric of things,
and all light is forever fading
and serves to illuminate only what
has been lost or remains absent.
Transformation
It is a solitary watch the crow keeps
and with a jeweler’s eye surveys
the changing contour of the earth,
the blond brook that fitfully sleeps
beneath the ice; the undaunted way
snow falls – a month’s worth
within a day.
The silence seems to hunger for cold
and draws down the darker firmament
towards a stock-still earth;
the oak, whose upper branches hold
a make-shift ornament,
has lessened in height, grown in girth;
the different ways
this storm reconfigures all we knew
into the strange and less familiar.
Orchards turned to stubble; earth-
bowed junipers are ice-jeweled
fountains of colored glass and, there,
pressed to window, wind’s attached
a chrome-encrusted, blue-green spray.
Magnolia
- There is the iconic and aromatic southern magnolia, as well as deciduous, less-heralded species further north.
Hurrying to
dazzle, they’re
April’s air-borne
lavish; tapered
petals perched
upon leafless
branches like
lanterns of magenta
light that are
too soon extinguished,
falling to earth
on a sad-still
breeze in blazing
transit, littering
the grass with
withered flames
of brown scatter.
Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and, more recently, the Best of the Net Award, John Muro is a resident of Connecticut and a lover of all things chocolate. He has published two volumes of poems -- In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite -- in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Both volumes were published by Antrim House, and both are available on Amazon and elsewhere. John's poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Acumen, Barnstorm, Grey Sparrow, Moria, River Heron, Sky Island and the Valparaiso Review. Instagram: @johntmuro