Loretta Pierfelice


Winter's End

Grey and lean,
the ancient gypsy woman
drives her weary flocks ahead
ragged skirts trailing
dirty edges of sky
Until she stops
in the white nights
mumbling away the time
plotting, spinning drifts of crystal yarn
to cover, and keep warm the chastened children
when they learn the iron stories of old age.


Tough

Toughness earned
on the sharpness
of splintered bone
rusting nails
Too-knowing words
callusing soul stuff
Laughter shaken out
Or tears
Or both
in gallant pain
Cruelty demands
its chunks of heart
Compassion bleeds


Summer Insomnia

I am drugged by heat

Until I swim upon my dampened sheet
And rise to fracture less restricted space,
to seek the solid core of things
Whose burnt and ragged edges shred my sleep.

I plumb the eye sky fires
The questing, questioning stir
That feathers over my flesh
And draws the shrieks like music from the deep.

But I am loved by heat.


Mother Pain

The old one inside my head,
Thinks I’m too stupid to learn
The easy way.
I feared her back then, back when
I healed with careless speed.
And cried real tears.
And my clumsiness was swiftly met
With instant effect
Fierce and red.
But old bone grows back slow-
I mind her cautions better now and listen,
With respect, to my old friend.