TONY TACCONE

selected poems

 

 

 

AFTERMOST

 

in this time of the eclipse,

(yet another day spent by moonlight)

i discovered myself

waiting

 

for what i thought was you

but which was really only the moment

when i gave my fate over

to waiting.

 

for years now i have done this:

measured love by the volume

and velocity of loss, or

the rumor of anothers’ pleasure.

 

there is more certainty in that

than the courage to write

ones own happiness, to wake

inside the story.

 

still, it remains possible

that life is more water than bone,

that the stones in our bodies

can be used for the fire,

 

that the origin of things

is its own measure of blessing,

and that the light of our deaths

will bring another eclipse...

 

a concourse,

a bouquet,

the smelting of all good intentions.

 

 

 

 

BEYOND THE DELUGE

 

up here, waterfall,

the arctic flood

of red fishes and forests,

the unborn light

that lets us see

mustard seeds

in the soft white mouth of winter.

 

tiny umbrellas of

this years’ new grass,

upturned in prayer,

spread green beneath our feet

gone quiet to the sound

of blessing

and breathing.

 

this is where we fall

away from ourselves,

our skin unnecessary bark

(from trees long extinct)

that leaves us easier than

a whisper.

 

from here we can see

that we were wrong.

that what we think is death

is only what we want,

 

and that the newest living,

filled with cities

of men gone below

to hunt for children and other food,

will die in the next great deluge.

 

where will we be then, love?

where made, where left?

counting the slain,

dreaming what it was like

up here,

to dream the fall of heaven

 

 

 

 

BLACK BACK AGAIN

 

close the windows.

the light from these faces

breaks in on me

from some past novella

in love with everything forlorn.

 

the present overrun

not with itself but

infinite indifferent futures,

moving without motion,

stopping not to forget but

merely give way.

 

distance now negative,

measured from barstool to bottle,

mouth to stomach,

need to fiction,

the time it takes for everything.

 

in it I make my keep,

my sleep, the long, cool

nights and days become

lovers gone bad, safe only

in the drink

of the unforgiving dark.

 

 

 

BRIDGE                                                      

(in memory of Jeff Buckley)

 

when you sang, birds listened.

in treetops undiscovered you lived

in some kind of summertime,

 

the melodies that close to heaven,

the falsetto as true blue and blind

as god’s great gift of rhythm.

 

in every song we could see your eyes, and

your father, falling back towards eternity

into the dream of water,

 

water that would bless you,

take you,

head and all, even your

death a baptism,

 

the triumph implicit in our

immortal hunger for more,

more music,

more life,

more of what you might have sung

might have loved

might have lived in summer.

 

 

 

CHRISTMAS

 

this is the time of

what is supposed to be,

the day of Great Safety,

the original wellspring

of love and generosity

bubbling and tumbling

from the thimble

of our hearts

out into the cup

of the unrimmable world,

into the untamed

and infinite nature

of each other,

the re-telling of goodness

a sanctifying restorative,

a purgative elixir we had

somehow forgotten,

misplaced, lost with

the car keys under the bed

but now re-found

in time to save us,

all of us,

our smallness gone large,

our prayers become answerable,

our eyes all milk

and warm honey water,

opening when right

to be lapped then kissed

by the invisible tongue

of any and every good god.

 

 

 

 

IN THE UNBLEMISHED HEART OF PENNSYLVANIA

 

it was way beyond dark.

no good trace of any loving god.

no moon, no sound, no light.

 

just the bloody purring

of the unbloodied car

perched on the edge

of the indifferent highway

where the fast-fallen deer

looked up out past

the kneeling woman

and up out past the night.

 

its eyes gone pools

of liquid-brown ice that

with the blue-black shiver

in the lines of her fingers

kept telling the woman

that it was not the deers

but her own tender life

whose plight had become

something desperate...

 

and so she touched it,

hours minutes or seconds later,

touched where the body

kept opening to discover

the hidden gift of its dying,

touched where the life

flew up out into

whatever was not the deer.

 

so that

in that secret

closet of time,

pressed as they were

forever together,

 

a song of yearning

was born between them,

a marriage of prayer

and every desire

conjoined in their finding,

the broken yearling

and the woman becoming,

lost on this night

to the Great Song of  Leaving,

the ever-light of grieving,

but forever re-found

in the dying miracle

alive in the last of our breathing