portion of the artwork for Stephen Massimilla's poetry

Cathedral
Stephen Massimilla

A smell of indifference

Lying in wait, in mind,
I tried to write
A person rarely kissed,

A sister touched by images:
A branching November
Tending to shade her hill.

Through leaf-threads
In the rake, past a scrupulous
Spider editing her trap,

Spirey shadows touch
The pith of me,
Because I did not hope,

Autumn restless at my feet.

The next day was a deeper dead.
It said nothing to me
Of redemptive metamorphosis.

What we are given:
Confrontation.
Grasping at grasping

The habit of facing up
To nature. Fugacity.
Bits of night,

The blue flame of a grass blade
Clinging to my boot-sole,
The gaudy shedding of an elm

Too tall, too cold to bend.


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 31 | Winter 2011