V E R S E and I M A G E

Its stomach brushes ground

as by long acquaintance,

one foot then another, one leaf,

slow digestion, eyes alert

like high-beams

in the wind-swept night,

hard against the air yet telling

stories as a stained-glass

window, victory

over hastening death,

comrade of dust and mud

and golden squares like armor

glinting whenever sun

arcs its sacrifice –

just so I think of you

unfolding a yellowed piece

of paper, words

you never meant to say

crawling their careful

way into my bone-frame,

softer than

the moon starting

to curl

into dawn

from Canonicals – Love’s Hours

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At 17 she had a boyfriend (briefly) whose language she did not speak. The two would sit at the back of the bus through the turns and hesitations of the clamorous diesel-fumed city and communicate with their lips, although words are not what passed between them. When they came up for breath it was no use to tell him about the menacing gothic facade they were passing or comment on the uniformed school children being led across the bridge. He would stare at her and she back at him until they reached her stop. Come inside? What am I saying, and what do you think I mean? Well,  Tschuβ until tomorrow after school.

Some would say that no boy and girl at 17 ever speak the same language. Some say man and woman never at any age. Cynics. Nevertheless, when the girl’s best friend, who commanded some phrases the boy could grasp, had to call him one evening to convey a final message from the girl – angry? sad? frustrated? – and cancel any further bus rides, she still could never quite understand how it all had gone so wrong. An inter-language dictionary proved no help at all. Decades later she would still wake at 3 AM and feel the fool, although a few latent hippocampal neurons, hers and no doubt his as well, continued to fire, “What if? What if?” One tattered shred of recollection with lint of vocabulary she could have pieced together if she had tried still labored to remind her of this: when they had turned toward each other and he placed his hand at her neck, fingers in her soft short hair, they had seemed to understand each other well enough.

❦

Time is both a bewildering tangle and a firm reassurance in these poems by David Radavich from Canonicals – Love’s Hours. It is a book of hours – matins to vespers – but also a book of days and years. The images can be elusive, like moonlight through restless leaves, yet remain rich in their enticement. And what message does this subtle, earthbound, exalted language, this language both  precise and intangible, what does it desire to convey? The object, the “you,” is it a focus for affection and gratitude or a saving grace always just beyond reach? Each word lovingly selected, placed, ordered: these poems understand you, the reader, and they invite you with all hopefulness and promise to understand them.

Canonicals  – Love’s Hours by David Radavich, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, KY. © 2019 [author biography and book purchase HERE]

❦ ❦ ❦

Quietly, quietly

dawn takes its place

among the world’s

elements –

There will be rapes today,

and military coups,

also gay

birthdays, painful

dyings and forlorn lovers

discovering their first infatuation

with another body.

Let me be there for it all,

all seasons, all temperaments

seeing

the round circus

black and gold as autumn

spinning into night

love turning

a corner

into open doors

that lead to bright air

blowing

many leaves

from Canonicals – Love’s Hours

❦ ❦ ❦

To rediscover.

To find again what

has been lost

for more than thirty years.

A stolen ring

on someone else’s

hand, gold around a gun

or maybe you

clutching my heart

like a bandit.

In any case

it reappears, this missing

self, this jewel tossed

in some closet,

the world turns

so that China ends up

and we are land

at the sphere’s bottom

rediscovering what

has been lost by many others

and found again like

sunrise,

like buds breaking.

from Canonicals – Love’s Hours

❦ ❦ ❦