Thomas Locicero

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Seeing

There the tree with its wrinkled torso
and malformed arms exults; though
headless and legless, it is forever
pointing and bowing to the unseen.
I sit, my back against it, trying to see.
It hunkers down and takes on all
that nature is permitted to give; I
complain of every pain that slinks
inside my bubble. But the tree is not
one to fret the fall, the winter, the
animals, the axe. Were it to fall and
fold me now, would I suddenly see
from some other realm that I was
among the fortunate to have been
planted there where my roots were
free to clutch a place worth clutching?
Would not billions from across the
world trade their lives for mine?
Because I have not wept in waters
not clean enough to drink, I have seen. 
​

Debunking a Harmless Belief
​(a metaphor)

That no two snowflakes are alike is a
more curious story to tell our children
than the contrary, lies notwithstanding.
Science has proven this assumption,
this myth long believed to be true,
to be false, but why? Why tell an
identical twin that her left eye is
droopier than her sister’s? Pack the
common, customary, generic, ordinary,
unexceptional flakes together into a
patented, particular, personal, perfect
ball and the warmth of your freezing
hand will marvelously reduce it to an
unspectacular puddle. This is the fate
of all snowflakes. Have you ever seen
two puddles that were exactly alike?
​

As Winter Approaches

You see your breath. The birds squawk about flight
patterns and wind shear, then go mute. The hay
shivers and the shaken trees give up their dead,
a necessary washing of the branches.
The wind now proudly wields the microphone.

The cold returns like an old prisoner,
unsure of being wanted but having
no place else to go. It is all a tagging
in, orchestrated by the pulling of strings,
not unlike the complexities of crochet.

Soft grasses give way to the hardening soil.
Nature burrows in, prepares to sleep, or flees.
Flowers, without a sun to face or a face
to sun, bow from, not to, a dull gray sky.
They await their clippings and plastic coats.

Bricks send out their first smoke signal, the first
of the year; odd, considering the year
is coming to its bitter end. No other
time of year requires communication
by chimney. The rest is up to animals.

Inside, weathermen have too much to say
and there is too much talk of milk and bread.
Christmas decorations go from attic
to garage to lawn; their lights, too, have words.
Old sweaters are removed from old cedar chests.

There are people, not thought of through the year,
who suddenly hold a place in our hearts.
Some are young and have gone far too early,
others old with no promise of tomorrow.
Winter is truly the best and the worst of times. 
​

For Claudia Emerson

I discovered you on the same day I
learned of your death. I’d heard of you, of course;
what lover of poetry hasn’t? I spent
the last seven years doing nothing but
working, like Jacob trying to earn Rachel.
Finally, I inhaled and you entered
my soul. But when I exhaled, you were gone.
You wrote of the late wife and then became one.
Like a mother who’s miscarried, I ask,
How can I miss someone I’d never met? 
​

​Thomas Locicero's profile

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Anticipated Interruption
                   ~for my son, Ben

Suspended within reach, somewhere
in the atmosphere, those few words
that will lead my poem home.
They tease me, flash me, taunt me.
I think I hear them whisper,
but my internal clock warns me
of the anticipated interruption.
It is the commercial that breaks in
just before the killer is revealed.
Instead of hurrying, I hold.
Then there is the detonation
and the boy’s energy frightens
away the words, which scatter
like birds after buckshot fills
the air, and then his words come.
Before hello, he says, “Raise your hand
if you have an armpit,” and, silly me,
I do, and I brace for attack. He says
he missed me, and I don’t miss my words.
There are no words without him. 
​

Were Muses Not Imagined
                   ~for Richard Wilbur

Were muses not imagined
By those whom they are said to inspire,
I would engage them,
Not for words but visions.
 
As poems heap hot coals
Upon the heads of some,
They too serve as the cloth
That washes Man’s feet.
 
But some poets claw
For third-heaven language,
And the residue collected
Underneath their fingernails
Can ignite stars with God’s fanning breath. 
​

Because You Are Polite

It is hot out and she is wearing all
of her clothes because she only has two
hands. She rests against a building and you
hand her your water. She smiles with closed lips
because she does not want you to see her
teeth. She says, God bless you, and holds out a
hand for you to shake. You are polite, so
you oblige her and now there is a sticky
substance attached to you and you know nothing
about how and what the skin absorbs, and she
now possesses the only water in sight.
You bid her a good day and, walking away,
do not wipe your hand because you are polite. 

Cultivation

The bird-scattered seeds sat atop the soil
and the rain was a deep-pocketed frequenter.
Sometimes, small puddles would form
and some seeds made their way into the
fertile ground and for some time there
would be no activity, no signs of life.
The other seeds were pecked away,
perhaps by the same birds that had
unknowingly sown them. Then time
would be the arbiter of this unusual
sequence of non-events. There would
be little change and the garden would
sit nearly empty, an above-ground grave.
The sun, the seeds, and the soil must
have been baffled by the seemingly
dead earth. Hadn’t they seen the dirty
hands of cultivation just next door?
Tomorrow is not promised in the Bible,
though there’s a promise of perpetuity.
Mary Oliver called tomorrow invisible;
that is its most accurate definition.

​                          ♢
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