Gains & Losses
 
 
Days of Reckoning

 
In the disorder of leaves
smoke rises,
stroking your hair.
 
A west wind hisses,
snagging fox tail
and red pine cluster.
 
We drink cider in mugs
filled from subterranean streams.
The descent into hell
was flight, not a search
for beauty.
 
I never scaled
the talking tower.
 
I never looked
inside the beauty box.
 
Curling up, we wait,
maples’ winged seeds
pressed in your Bible.
In this hurricane
season, sun and satellite act as one.
 
Night falls
without a trumpet blast
from heaven. We look for signs.
Since equinox,
we have been as pointed
as a crescent, smoothed briefly
by Indian Summer.
 
A new moon gleams
on the other side---
a crow’s view of the Pantheon.
Midnight washes away
grit accumulated
from days of wood burning.
The calendar calculates.
Numerals ignite on a Catherine wheel.
Each cipher, a rocket,
forces the helm to veer.
Someday digits will be charred
pinwheels and ash,
while Psyche weeps
at her loss;
not of loveliness,
but of you,
having consumed
all of your numbers.
 
 






Copyright 2005, 2009,  Rosemarie Crisafi

Rosemarie Crisafi lives in Fishkill, New York.  In addition to writing poetry and drawing, she works in for a non-for-profit agency that serves individuals with disabilities.  "Days of Reckoning" was previously published in Triplopia, January 2005.



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