Rural adventure II
I’d like to milk a goat
one day, you said.
Well, how about now? The weather
is fine, a sort of deep comprehensibility
about it. Italy
sinks beneath the
waters and another country
starts moving
upwards. It’ll be too late
soon, mother
will return with
her kitten army, her conversation –
‘eat the tomato,
eat the potato…’ There’s no end
to a mother’s beliefs. They run along beside you
like children in a movie
planning some
enormous farewell.
Philip Traylen writes the Substack oldoldoldoldnew [poems, philosophy, diary, translations].
After the Storm
After the storm, from out where once had sat
Our roof: Cathedraled sky, the eye of God
A glacial blue beneath a heaving brow.
The thing had in the long galloping wind
Of morning peeled away like sardinha
From father’s early tin. The neighborѕ gathered
To see, upturned, bearing upward, that thing
That had girdled our lives’ innermost secrets,
Made public correlates of private lives
And private minds. We made it out easy.
Just two doors down, a massive oak had passed
Perpendicularly through a house
By gravity’s mute compulsion, as did
That evening slice in two the halves of childhood.
Erico Silva is a writer, high school teacher, and mathematician living in Philly.