Light and Time

By Michael Mirolla

Michael Mirolla's poetic world is one where a mirror, or any simple reflective item is tilted ever so slightly, providing an opening to places we never imagined existed. (One of them is his own birth, from the inside, looking reluctantly out.) The poet is a metaphysical detective, finding the cracks and gashes that open into other worlds. Uncomfortable in the here and now, he would rather spend time in the past/future, or on the edge of that mirror. Luckily for us, shaped by his reflective, polished imagery, all those worlds are fascinating places to visit, doing a brief meet-and-greet with his myriad ghosts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica
• Release date: Jan 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781550715521

Michael Mirolla

Born in Italy and raised in Montreal, Michael Mirolla is the award-winning author of the novel Berlin (2010 Bressani Prize), The Giulio Metaphysics III, and the poetry collection The House on 14th Avenue (2014 Bressani Prize). He lives in Oakville, Ontario.

Book preview

MICHAEL MIROLLA

LIGHT AND TIME

 ESSENTIAL POETS SERIES 178

GUERNICA

Toronto – Buffalo – Lancaster (U.K.)

2010  

Contents

Taylor Creek Park, Toronto: A Cycle 

1. August: The Landscape Without You

2. November: Moths and Trees

3. February: Entropic Vistas on a Winter’s Day

4. May: The Carelessness of Resurrection

5. Taylor Creek Park: July, 2009

Thus Ends the Odyssey 

The Light at the End of the Tunnel 

To Franz K. 

Crane Lake 1. 

Rational Thought 

Between the Lines 

Le repos du vieillard 

The Fit 

The Day Is a Slow Beetle 

You There 

The Garden 

Clay 

Passage: The Arabian Sea 

Juhu, Mumbai 

As Ghosts on a Rental Ride Flit By 

Descendings 

When We Lie 

The Torpid Beauty of an Autumn Afternoon 

Extinguishing 

On the Acceptance of Death after Life 

Brief Encounters 

Snap: On the Death of a Friend 

He Steals the World 

Blind Alley 

Roman Sketch 

Venetian Blind 

The Listeners 

L.A. 

Data de facto 

The Secret Place 

Verdun Profiles 

Pablo Picasso Visits James Joyce and They Discuss Youth 

Waiting for the Thieves to Come in the Night 

Quint Essential 

Salvation 

Claustro-Phobia 

Tumbleweeds 

Superfluous 

The Touch 

Youth 

Operation 

N.D.G. Night 

Elegy for Whoever Needs It 

Body and Soul 

Ghosts 

The House 

Beyond the Appian Way 

Along a Country Road 

At the Wall 

God’s Language 

Is It Someone We Know? 

If Ever the Dancer 

The Art of Walking 

Occult Slide Test 

The River’s Green Mouth 

A Son Washes His Mother. He Does 

To Jackie, Medea and GianCarlo,

and the three dream boys:

Gabriel, Christopher and Daniel

time is... an old salmon fighting

the dotage of tides and moon-fickle waters

time is... the hermaphrodite’s corpse

never desecrated by fables

of eternity in damp museums

Taylor Creek Park, Toronto: A Cycle

                                                  1

August: The Landscape Without You

In the cruel light of a dead afternoon 

he rises from the bed,

plunging through liquid walls 

into the world’s ever-greenness.

Across the lost fields a hot wind drizzles 

ash. Laser-blue petals lift their tongues 

to a cryptic sky. The air blinks

and turns to rust, settling along pathways 

that edge ever deeper into the shadow

of sanctuary.

Yellow flashes across the crowns of bursting nettles. 

The choked meadows struggle to breathe,

reach higher and higher

above the puffs of exploded milkweed.

The path cracks open – dry heaving.

It throws up fragments of splintered mirror…

of liquefied green… splashing 

where feet should trod

but he floats slightly above the ground, 

grasps at thorns that draw no blood; 

razors that leave no cuts.

A bee struggles to levitate on the long sigh 

of a spirit breeze, wafting aloft

on the memory of pollen.

Emaciated mushrooms mark trespassing boundaries, 

a line of white crosses in a haunted field

where burial becomes impossible. 

Trees genuflect, as if in worship, 

and lack the will to rise again.

He pulls back the curtain and crosses a fatal distance. 

There’s a rubber suit draped over stone steps

that descend into an insipid stream. A frantic umbrella 

twirls on ravaged ribs, falls clattering to one side

all out of spin. A tricycle vanishes into the past 

and pulls behind it the last escape route.

Hands held v-shaped high above his head,

he plunges, breaks the surface of the reflection 

for a second…

for a split-second…

before it re-assembles in the murky water 

and allows him

to swallow 

himself.

                                                      2

November: Moths and Trees

On a day like today,

ice receding momentarily from earth’s taut brow, 

the moths arise from their crystalline sleep.

In the fibrous air, they fumble 

on cracked and bitter wings.

They flit between raindrop spears, 

dirty pieces of cloud

along the river’s snaky