December 2022
Author's Note: "Evening Recitation" is the concluding poem to Nightshades, a collection that came out earlier this year. The content may fall into the "Unexpected" category simply because it isn't run-of-the-day news. It's not violent, or difficult, or threatening, in fact, it is the opposite of what seems to have become daily fare. A psychologist might call the poem in its entirety, a reaction formation. Well, if we didn't have our reaction formations, we'd be left with communal chatter which so often describes a dismal world. I have poems forthcoming next year, ("Birds," and "The Plane Tree") in Gival Press' Arlington Literary Journal, and ("Black Lighting") in The Wallace Stevens Journal. These too, fall into the unexpected category.
Evening Recitation
Innocence of vegetables in the garden of vegetables,
of white melons, little moons in rows
among bed fellows,
Innocence among clusters of lupine and globe mallow
in mountain meadows where they will never
be seen,
In the blue hour, in the restless wind, in rain,
innocence of poplars and cypresses wildly
twisting,
Innocence of opals like the eyes of eyeless
animals, purity of rice in their hulls,
innocence in the purity of the flash
Of every ambition, in the intentions
of street performers, drifters,
dilettantes,
Innocence in every motion that seeks
another ensemble, in the purity
that is only purity.
Originally published in Nightshades
©2022 Michael Gessner
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