LIKE SNOWFLAKES DESCENDING, Salvatore Buttaci [read e book .txt] 📗

© 2009 Salvatore Buttaci


Sunday Visit

We kiss between the grating,
breaths heavy with longing.
Your talk is fast––stories of home;
There’s too little time.
Instead, we pretend this
is the day of my release.
We laugh like children at play
in a garden exploding colors
like a dizzy man’s stars.
But winter is everywhere.
We count the deserting moments,
touch fingertips through
the wire-mesh grating.
In your eyes the hurt’s unbearable,
so I quickly look away.
When my eyes return,
you are gone. Again heaven
slams shut the spring garden gate.


What the Moon Knows

wolves howl
from wooded sanctuaries
in the winters of night

if only we could translate
their lupine bayings
at the moon

if only we could learn
what the moon already knows
and hides from us

if we should tremble
behind locked doors
or ride the howling into sleep


The Crime of Autumn

winter in the wings
autumn soon enough
will don its heavy coat
rehearse down-the-back
shivers and tremblings
strut through nature
with a vengeance
suck dry
chlorophyll dreams

autumn says
somebody's got to do it
but then why
the diabolic sneer
the piercing eyes
raucous laughter
in the diaspora
of leaves
now brittle
in their colors
taking to the wind

autumn insists
winter demands
a prelude to
the white death
a syncophant
to rustle up
some dying
before winter
roars its frigid
killing breath


Once on My Street

it was a tall sycamore
proud of its roots
ostentatious each spring
in its display
of blossoms
and of leaves

still proud in winter
bare and shivering
in the white wind
the yellow moon
cupped
in its clawing branches

and then one June morning
they took the giant saw
to the trunk
of the unsuspecting
sycamore
brought low its green branches

and left only a stump
coated with concrete
to quiet the bark
of last impressions


Hobart’s Café Revisited

Why is it some refuse to buckle under?
Destiny assigns them a place in life’s schemes,
But they reject it, believing they can find their own.

The facts are these: last August she turned you away.
She made it quite clear she no longer loved you.
Remember her note, the one you read at this same table?

You committed the words to memory, allowed them
to burn brightly there. Can you explain the reason
You’ve returned here at the height of this cold December?

If love can die in a blooming season, what then
Can we say of winter? What you mistook for love
Was made of ice where nothing green can grow.

Still, you sit there, hands warming against your cup
Of steaming coffee, and you shake your head at me,
At my attempt to stop you from being a fool again.

Jane says she left the city in October.
She told the waitress she’d be gone for good.
In all her talks, she never once mentioned your name.

What makes you think good can come of this?
That she will all at once regret and make things right?
Use your head. Drink your coffee, just walk away.


A Coat of Many Colors

On sleek winter sidewalks hedged with mounds
of off-white snow, he shivers in a coat
of many colors: a gift to himself
in a better season, before the unraveling
threads of the woof and warp
tattered into strings of cruel reminders.

How is it he can trudge almost invisibly?
through a crowd of late-night Christmas shoppers,
cut a straight path with his grocery cart
the way the Caesars did in curtained litters
shouldered by servants
down stones of Roman streets?

Once upon a past along these same streets,
he hurried like these shoppers, head bowed
to the tick of office time, his worth measured
in the tickertape of stocks and bonds,
his wife and children loved with words
and gifts and promises of One Day Soon.

He thinks himself invisible
on the winter street, warm inside his cashmere coat,
a world away from a warm house, a daily shower,
breakfast devoured behind the rustling
of front-page news, he drags an infected foot
of a homeless body reeking in the cold air.

Sadly he remembers all of it,
and if he cared to speak, he would not find
the words. How does it come to be
that somebody's father, someone's son,
a man once needed, a brother, a husband,
a man worthy of love could feel so betrayed
he'd will his life away to this hell,
descend so deeply into the pit
of his own winter that only this coat,


once cashmere camel's hair, now torn and splotched
in a color patchwork of filth, the coat you see him
wear, cinctured with a belt of rope, buttonless


collar half torn away, this coat from which
he will not part, this coat that one winter night
he will close his eyes and die in.


Condemned

in a porcelain vase a dusty bouquet
of faded silk roses tremble in a steady
cold front breezing through the window sill.

in this empty house on this uneventful day
November once anniversaried with laughter
now garbs its flesh in ceremonial grief.

in the slow dragging feet of the condemned,
time mirrors what it measures and on walls
of stippled blue a thousand eyes stare
through daylight and darkness.

in the voices vibrant once when this house
lived and breathed, words have lost their courage,
and even spirits who haunt these rooms have absented
themselves in a show of lost-lovers' solidarity.
December


December wears her heavy coat,
earmuffs and a long red scarf.
Into her rosy hands all chapped
she blows hot air the sun won’t yield.

Sometimes when the wind blows hard,
December strains her ears to hear
and wonders if within the howl
the syllables of secrets lie,

or could it be, she asks herself,
if once again the end draws near
and she must acquiesce to Time,
pass on to January
the old year’s woolen gloves.



Transport

Today I will be a lonely train
A black machine on icy rails
Past villages buried in snow.
I will whistle haunting dirges
As I plow towards Siberia.

In the guts of me passengers
Lonelier than I mutter old
Remembered prayers and weep for
Mother Russia. I will be a train
Today. In my wooden seats

Huddle those who believe they shiver
From the cold. Outside they watch
The houses, the trees, all their dreams
Vanish in reverse, washed away in
Thick white strokes against their windows.

Tomorrow in a train yard I will
Repent. For my penance see myself
A New York City bus, open and shut
My doors to winter shoppers
And laughing school children.

But today I will be a train
Coiling around the Urals like
A serpent black and hissing.
And I will not brake until
I reach the gates of hell.


Oxymora

Like snowflakes descending from a dark sky,
his last note, a thousand shreds of paper now,
flutters down from her balcony. Why
couldn't he have written words to save her?
At least these sharp, hurtful words are dulled forever.
What cruel kindness! A final note to ease the pain
of parting. He will never return. From the balcony
she stares wet-eyed at the courtyard below
where children race to catch a summer
blizzard in their open hands.


Services

Old Father Murphy dressed in somber black cassock
recites prayers over Mrs. O'Bannion's casket
while all around the gravesite tears cascade
from mourners' eyes, some sincere, some contrived.
Downcast, they dig their chins tight against their chests.
Then, cap in hand, the gravedigger Flynn
clears his throat to signal to the rest
assembled here to note the time and say
their very last goodbyes so he can work.
Mrs. Reilly mentally runs through a new recipe
for the tuna casserole she'll bake tonight.
She nods her head as if each ingredient
were the name of Jesus-- a litany for O'Bannion.
The crowds shuffle towards their cars and waiting cabs
to the chagrin of Patty Sheridan,
uncle of the deceased, who thinks their hasty exit
vulgar. "A stampede of cattle, is it?"
he mumbles. "A fine send-off for that sweet
niece of mine. To be treatin' her like some castaway!"
Meanwhile, Father Murphy drones away at his Catholic
eulogy about how Margie O'Bannion
was a classic example of the sinless soul
prepared to meet her Maker. Mrs. Reilly mentally
chokes on her tuna casserole, coughs, then wonders
what will be said of her when death catches her here
in this sad place. Will the good Father Murphy's words
sprout her wings, present a clean white bill of spirit health,
and like O'Bannion, win her a brand new reputation?


Old Blue

When I was a boy on Grandpa's farm
it was a joy that winter, feeding
the animals he kept on three acres
he called Heaven. When the white fell, sheep
herded towards the barn and Grandpa's border
collie raced in crazy circles snapping
at snowflakes lighting on his panting tongue.
I laughed so hard! Old Blue Boy looked like
a mad dog barking at insect stars
fluttering down on Grandpa's Heaven.
Then, red with anger, Grandpa scolded Blue,
ordered him right there to lie down quietly.

I can still, after all these years, recall
how I stared down Old Blue Boy to rise up
and challenge my grandfather. Meanwhile
the storm whipped the air in swirling white,
until all that was visible in that field
was Old Blue Boy's tail wagging outside
a heap of snow. He would not move.
Finally, Grandpa waved me inside the warm
house, then, two fingers in his mouth,
forgivingly, he whistled for Old Blue Boy
to shake himself free and come to dinner.


I Could Have Loved Winter

I could have loved the death of nature
Embraced it like a friend
Raised hopes after the fall

I could have loved all things white
Raced my heart away from grief
Praised creatures hibernating

I could have loved winter
Faced all those tomorrows gallantly
Courageously in your company

I could have loved blizzards
Braced myself for all life might have offered
Chased contrarieties away

I could have accepted ice and snow
Graced the winter months with laughter
But in January you chose to leave me

I could have loved but chose instead to
Paste memories in scrapbooks, say “Love
Stays? Never!” For me you killed winter


What Can We Confess

This is the