September 2022
Bio Note: I live in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and work as a tech writer, a job I’ve had off and on for over 30 years. So much for my day job. Over the years, I’ve reviewed classical records and CDs for several publications and published young-adult novels and five books of poetry, including Swallowed Up in Victory, a long narrative poetry based on the Civil War. My most recent publication is a chapbook, Magnetic North, from Finishing Line Press.
In remembrance
of the bee fly: gunmetal sticks
of her legs and probing nose flex
with the gentle bend you see
in those folding garden chairs all soft
angles curve on curve as she glides over
the lantana bush nosing each plump umbel
her sheer wings a blur above her furred thorax
untroubled by me
bee-busy she plumbs any number
of the fifty purple and yellow clusters
tiny communion trays of brass offered up
in this last slanting light
Accommodation
Somebody loves us all.
—Elizabeth Bishop, “The Filling Station”
Somebody
has proffered to us
these thousand wild nosegays in shocking pink,
a meadowful of them. It’s coffee-shop art,
all the more garish for its tastefully
rendered highlights in old gold,
its plain frame of slate-gray.
Severe: the colors of wet clouds
and autumn drought. The tall grass
nods pale heads, wise with seed.
Really, it’s a ham-handed gesture,
like those wingèd putti
that sugarcoat the altarpieces
and frescos of Old Masters.
Fat, pink fish—they ply the air like waves
nuzzling the cloud
the Madonna sails through, always
with a slippery grin, an adoring stare. Eager,
nimble as gourami in a tank,
how they shadow the inscrutable,
the grim-faced saint
or the monumental and perfected Savior
swimming His way across
the white empyrean.
Originally published in Blue Fifth Review
©2022 Lee Passarella
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