Words like combs
on every tongue move
at our driveway's edge
a rear view mirror's canvas
passes notes and cars
yet the poet is obsessed
only with the sea,
daring flashlights of devouring cold
expecting a shortsighted cloud
of a downtown phrase
to knock out every pain,
only the eventide
will wrestle hairsplitting breath
with a back hold soliloquy
a memory's spasm
to gather and wave on.
Banal December windows
a twilight kaleidoscope
on the gray and sleet
luminous shaped
moonlight
in a sudsy glance
a cat by milk's odor
prowls for its wildness
tangles and moves on
noiselessly by the sill
frozen on geraniums
not bothering to bathe
in its own corner
stepping out
of legwork's unbuttoned shoes
from highways or landfalls
carrying its embrace
of heartless whitewash favor.
When the deep Charles River
turns blue
in half light
far away
from the grass stained shore
its sailboats topple
glimpsed from Bay State Road
your tinted knapsack opens
with Brie, books,
and blood oranges
for an earthy wet picnic
on an airless August
planned from a short ride home.
You hear a hard motorcycle
between calls and crickets
and a chestnut drops
between old oak and elm
joggers, walkers, and bicycle riders
in deep sun echoes
harmoniously advance
in corroded joy
by willows at the river's edge.
It starts to rain
on this sluggish noon day
your initials land
from an ink stained thumb
on a three ringed diary,
the tiny breeze evaporates
from a torpid wind
that sails even wish for squalls
and an exiled Odysseus appears
somewhere in a passerby shadow.
B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review,; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest); Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.