Twilight Meditation


Once I used to see autumnal dusk
as a cozy backdrop, a waiting room
leading into the darkness, safe keeper
of seasonal pleasures, mixing cold
with warmth and holiday bright
decorations sparkling like snake eyes
not too far in the distance.
Sunset unstopped a bottle of scotch.
Even the carved pumpkin had airs
of transgression about it. Tonight twilight’s
a moral indictment, a smothering blanket,
a shade cutting off quotidian day, foreclosing
a house teeming with possibilities,
hope and renewal, swallowing up my dreams
in a suffocating dust storm; a lid
on the coffin of days that have passed
away with only me at the wake.




No Reprieve


When I was young, an inmate doomed to die
reminded us we too were on death row.
I snickered at his self-consoling lie;
and in my high-rise cell presumed to sow
the seeds of liberty that might defy
my jailers. Thus, I cultivated mind
and body in a vain attempt to buy
myself more time against Life’s fatal bind.
And later, on a television show,
a killjoy meets the felon she’d betrayed.
He lets her weary brain enjoy the flow
of warmth inside the prison that she’d made
for herself, then kills her. Just so, some god
sends us a cornucopia of years
that pass like haunted ghosts. And thus, we plod
our way in chains. Sweet recollection sears
us midst the shadows and advancing gloom
that mark our plaintive journey to the tomb.

(previously published in Contemporary Rhyme)


Frank DeCanio was born & bred in New Jersey, work in New York. I love music of all kinds, from Bach to Dory Previn, Amy Beach to Amy Winehouse, World Music, Latin, opera. Shakespeare is my consolation, writing my hobby. I like Dylan Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost, Ginsburg, and Sylvia Plath as poets.