Poetry

 

 

P. H. Liotta

Solitude in Words

Each separate flake, since none will last,
fails to black, the infinity of zero.
New snow in the wood:
faded etchings, the tracks of deer
are hieroglyphs of unknown
forms, blank as the page
in a book where the end

turns to meaning with no end.
The white blank page: this page.
A trail of words, unknown.
The way the fogging breath of deer
speak to absence in the wood,
like voices wrapped around a zero.
Word each breath, as if it were the last.

 

Because You Could

There is no meter in your soul, he said,
As if words quick-sink in a fallow heart
When the spirit of a place is dead.

We must make something from the dark,
Or else words fail us and we fail ourselves
And words quick-sink in a fallow heart.

You trust yourself or trust where all those voices dwell
And plow the field from where the damage started,
Or else words fail you and then you fail yourself.

It's easy, sure enough, for those departed.
For them there is nothing, no one left to shatter.
You plow the field from where the damage started.

Because? You could. That's really all that matters.
The I in you is what makes the voices sing
Until there is nothing and no one left to shatter.

The echo rounding back is what really smarts and stings:
There was never meter in your soul, you said
In answer to the voices made inside that make you sing
When the spirit of a place is dead.

 

 

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