Read More: A brief Q&A with Glen Vecchione
Blue
After cataract surgery, October 2017
The ancients had no word for it,
a pureness having nothing to do with eating,
killing, making love; nothing to do with the bliss of green
that burned in the lamps of evening olive trees.
Ulysses sailed the “wine-dark sea,” after all,
wine an abiding habituation with his honeyed breads.
But today, the gas under my kettle shoots sprays of cornflowers,
and the sky beyond my window is a fathomless cool,
and the shadow under the hammock is a trough of sapphires
and my veins
run bright beneath the pale of my wrists.
Joy to a world so happily awash in that radiance—blue!
God-iris and turquoise capes of angels;
Sirius, the dog-star, winking above saguaros in late August,
swimming-pool blue from its perch in Orion.
Blue is the ink pot bought at the thrift store, the ceramic clown from Venice,
the nape of a magpie when it cocks to the sun;
even my screensaver soothes me.
I am a bluefin, flashing through the ancient underseas
that gnaw the pillared islands.
In shadows I began here; in slanted light I rise,
eyes sleeved in silver, lifted towards heaven.
The Discovery
A forgotten twist of vine
I found beneath the scrub-rosemary
one drooping cone of unlustrous berries
in a slot of sun.
Still plump
a few returned the light in violet pupils
others sagged like half-full sacks, the rest
crisped to raisins, dropped from their pins
to the wormy ground.
I tasted all.
The violet few were sweet and rich, seed-
charged as expected
the salvageable groundlings
bright and bitter
but from one wrinkled softie wrested from a fly
came whiffs of sour amazement—
bursts of fiery nectar sprung from its flesh
made sensations on the tongue and in the nose
a kindling warmth, a candle in the throat
filling the head like overtones […]
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It Begins with Palm Trees
More primeval thistle than tree
or threadbare brush to daub a spattered dawn,
they are back-scratchers for the nude
shoulder of the moon when she drops
her straps; become prayer-rattles, incantations
to the wet heart of a cloud
that scoops low at noon but doesn’t stop.
Scorned, they turn matchsticks under a red sun:
We surrender, they clatter,
Burn us, burn us!
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Glen Vecchione is a poet, fiction writer, and the author of 34 nonfiction books for Sterling and Scholastic Publishing. His science, math, and history titles are published in several languages and distributed throughout the world. His poetry appears in Missouri Review, ZYZZYVA, Cincinnati Review, Comstock Review, Timberline Review, and he was named a Finalist in the 2022 Sewanee Review poetry competition as well as nominated for the 2022 and 2023 Pushcart Prizes. Glen also composes music for television with many product jingles and network themes of the late 1990s coming from his pen. Glen is a thirty-year resident of Southern California and currently divides his time between Palm Desert and San Diego. Find more at https://glenvecchione.com/.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Glen Vecchione