For Linda
On a midsummer day such as this,
cypress-scented air unfolding blue
over blue and floating down a tree-
lined street through our doors and
open windows, rooms gilded by
sunlight and calm as a chapel,
I still remember being stunned
to silence by your state of grace,
having long been abandoned
by god and betrayed once again
by body, and easing out of life
in a manner that was no less
luminous than this day, and some
time after, when all hope was
gone and with a heart still in
hiding, I remember finding
refuge in the abandoned stillness
that settles between waves and
the intermittent shimmer of
land-locked light, and then
holding my breath when an
osprey suddenly appeared
and hovered over the harbor,
free of wingbeat, doubling
down on life with its fierce,
head-long descent into surf
and yet never seeing it rise
again from the surface of water.
John Muro
John
Muro is a resident of Connecticut and a lover of all things chocolate. In
the Lilac Hour, his first volume of poems, was published in 2020 by Antrim
House, and it is available on Amazon. John is also a two-time, 2021 Pushcart
Prize nominee, and his poetry has been published in numerous journals and
anthologies, including Ariel Chart, Barnstorm, Euphony, Grey Sparrow,
River Heron and Sky Island. Pastoral
Suite, his second volume of poems, will be published later this spring.