Lance Calabrese

Edified

The weather held all afternoon
a steady breeze while we paced off footage
then back and forth went the ball -
just the slight chill tingeing
occasional gusts like fishbowl glass
slick smooth and the click click click
of blinds against windowpanes
after we’d gone inside
after we’d capped a good day.

From the patio I watched
an eerie radiance
summer’s sun momentarily dimmed
as if by the shadow of a circling hawk -
a cloud bank miles away
dark as coal dark as smokestack billows
without the evident pall.

Sometimes the world
beyond backyards
gathers itself
for a momentous unveiling
and heavens are clarified
for the aided eye’s
empty questions.
Often the Earth records
a flood but rarely what’s lost
in its wake -

and the memory
of our few hours
was altered abruptly.
The storm had missed us
but there would be no mention
not after such a day already fond
as glove and ball upon their shelf
the telescope dismantled
returned to its closet.

Always the kissed brow
then lights out
while another world
lies savaged
altered irrevocably
then the insignificant breeze
and darkness
and a sky’s mute archipelagoes
flickering.

Author Bio

Lance Calabrese is a self-taught writer born in California.