The silver maple's new green holds weariness:
under the redbud, in clean dirt, only weariness.
Closing the window against thunder-laden air,
I see through the screen a passerby's weariness.
Qoheleth in his bitter book complains against the wind
and finds in all that's seen or heard endless weariness.
Come, wife, and settle your head on my shoulder;
on the pillows we lean and seek to dispell our weariness.
Gino, why did you write these tiresome lines?
Don't you know that verses only mean weariness?
Next poem in the Contraries loop
Canoes upturned on a pickup truck—their hulls shine
with rain, keels burned by lightning's quick shine.
An autumn decades ago—from your hair a light
leaped into my heart; I yearned to touch its shine.
A midnight chapel lit only by stubby candles
whose flicker turned the crucified's wounds to shine.
Darkness fills the mirror with soft shadows;
if my asking is spurned, only shadows will shine.
Assembling the fragments of a broken child,
Gino, have you learned the secret that makes hearts shine?
Diamonds whirl in the blizzard driven by the north wind—
a bewildered squirrel leaps limbs iced by the north wind.
No dreams can match the crystal city built of ice,
no thoughts can unfurl the flag frozen to the north wind.
The cards lie where I place them; their meaning exceeds my eye.
In the painted distance, the King twirls a sword made of north wind.
Each metaphor collapses literally into dissonance
while mounted knights hurl javelins against the north wind.
Images spell secrets concealed in light and blood.
The dancer discloses in her right hand a pearl holding the north wind.
Who will lead me past the gates of desire to a wide place?
Who will turn my heart's mare to receive the north wind?
Gino says, "Reader, how do you know this ghazal's complete?
Can you hear the surly quiet that precedes the north wind?
Walking across the patterned world—a shadow of Jesus.
Failing to toss the dice to seven, the gambler cries, "Jesus!"
Only sunlight ever came through the stained glass window
where spiderwebs now frost the faded face of Jesus.
Composing a symphony with notes of broken steel,
the magician knows a loss of harmonics that encipher "Jesus."
Where the smashed car lies sideways in the median,
blood flows in a rutted foss, mud-veined stigma of Jesus.
Each side of the coin exhibits the same failed image:
Caesar's crippled gaze, lost in dismay at the silence of Jesus.
Sparrows flock to peck seeds—at the cat's stalking shadow,
their wings emboss the air, like those birds molded by the child Jesus.
This poem can go no further, Gino, until you scrape
the moss from your heart and discover, in its center, Jesus.
Lightning carves thunder on a cloud of silence;
iris blossoms throw bright scarves on rainy silence.
While the Creator carefully drafts each Day's speech,
the unformed Ocean heaves against the weight of silence.
As I return to your bed with words I cannot say,
my feet weave a tapestry of longing and silence.
With a fine brush and white paint, the teenager
pinstripes his old car, a reprieve from the bite of silence.
Insomnia rides into the room in every whisper.
Gino! Why not starve your mind and sleep in silence?
Breathing slowly, one nostril at a time, smell a rose,
eyes closed; do not shun the thorns that adorn the rose.
In winter, the bare stems ice over, as you already know,
but have you noticed that, at sunset, the cold stems blush rose?
Easter morning, the darkness grew still before dawn;
beyond a grove of oaks, in fun, a golden kite rose.
The June heat penetrates even the margins of your thoughts.
To revive your mind's function, anoint gently with oil of rose.
Gino, you have the flower's name, its fragrance, even a verb.
Now, turn a pun for how your life dances—rosily.
Next poem in the Otherness loop
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