Nicholas Pagano
November
I come to the mountain tired of being subject
to low altitude, needing to be made
translucent as the air when it’s bled into by snow.
From the valley, the leaf in everything rattles
free of its smoke. Each star is clearer,
but still an abstraction, a loosely assembled glow
like unfinished needlework. You can trace the lines
into great distances, to where they fray
to nothing. A battle was fought here,
so long ago now the weapons are luminous dust.
Late Villa
It can feel this way
is the only way,
the one marked by, yes,
there, the lean, broken
stems, windfall
apples, the rot, a scent
so persistent, the air
is plated bronze. This ends
in the ruin, where
enough is enough
and what won’t be
denied are the same
mosaic, Mystery,
in which a god descends,
hand outstretched
from the sky blue frame.
The birds return, spiraling
upward to the height that makes
clarity almost believable.
There isn’t one landmark
untouched by the work of rain.
Nicholas Pagano has poems in SPECTRA, PHILlit Journal, Lucky Jefferson, Trampoline, Mid-Atlantic Review, and elsewhere. He lives and writes in New York.