Saving Daylight: Collected Poems 2021

By Carmine Giordano

This collection records epiphanies, instances of poetry, moments of “extraordinary ordinary” insights that have happened to me
in the course of living my life as usual over the past year —the events that occurred in it concentrated and highlighted even more
by the Coronavirus pandemic. These are moments when the mind and spirit abstracts from everyday objects, situations and chains
of events seminal and universal truths about our existence as sentient creatures evolved to awareness over the process of thirteen billion years —
moments when we are dumbstruck with awe, or are startled into wonder, joy and compassion —moments when we see our breathless possibilities and our daunting limitations.
I invite you to share them with me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664159518

Carmine Giordano

Carmine Giordano was born in Brooklyn, New York, and has an MA in English Literature from New York University and was a recipient of a Fulbright Award for Study in Italy. He is a retired teacher and assistant principal from the New York City Board of Education. He is also a nationally certified psychoanalyst and a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP). He is an assistant editor of the online poetry magazine Abalone Moon and the author of six poetry collections: The Courage of Flowers, The Hero’s Journey, Still Sing, The Habit of Spring, Collected Poems 2020, and Saving Daylight. His poetry has appeared in The South Hampton Review, The River Poets Journal, Abalone Moon, Poets of the Palm Beaches Anthology, Perspectives, and Belletrist. Mr. Giordano has spent most of his life teaching writing and literature in New York, Georgia and Florida where he is an adjunct lecturer at Palm Beach State College and lives in happy retirement with his wife Ronnie.

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Copyright © 2021 by Carmine Giordano.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/23/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

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CONTENTS

1. Saving Daylight

2. Interior Design

3. Promethean Fire

4. Open Mic

5. O Sole Mio

6. Breakfast Plate

7. Self Portrait in Scratched Glass

8. Where We Live

9. To Be or Not to Be

10. On Elba

11. De Rerum Natura

12. Boynton Mesozoic

13. Nest

14. Web Design

15. Credo

16. Trumpet

17. Garden

18. Point and Purpose

19. Among the Stars

20. Small Weed at the Edge of the Garden

21. Dog

22. And at the Hour

23. Pensées

24. Doggerel

25. To a Flower Starting Its Descent

26. Pomp and Circumstance

27. At a Loss

28. Memorial Day

29. Pots and Pans

30. Flower

31. Minnesota: The Second Coming

32. Should’a Would’a Could’a

33. For the Fire

34. Poet

35. Big Breakfast McDonald

36. Still Life

37. ‘Tis of Thee

38. In the Yard

39. Sonofabitch

40. Father’s Day

41. Testament

42. Reverie

43. Messiah

44. Shaman

45. Finish Line

46. Planetary Travel

47. Frog

48. And Farewell

49. Flower

50. For That Matter

51. Bellaggio

52. Emancipation

53. Plant

54. Antonio, My Father

55. Dropsies

56. Survival Kit

57. Lost

58. Before You Took Your Life, Ted

59. The End

60. Puzzle

61. Daffodil

62. How It Is Right Now

63. Enough Already

64. The Last Thing

65. Waiting for Messiah

66. No

67. My Barbaric Yawp, and Yours

68. On Notice

69. Entrance

70. Poetry

71. As Is

72. Backyard Memorial

73. Love in a Time of War

74. Anniversary

75. Hearts and Flowers

76. Coronavirus Party

77. Statistic

78. La Madonna del Carmine

79. Still Life

80. Dies Irae

81. Is

82. Bug

83. Catastrophe

84. Than Zero

85. True Believer

86. Lost in Translation

87. Now

88. Raison d’être

89. Hiroshima Anniversary

90. Here and There

91. Rest Stop

92. For That Matter

93. Mattinata

94. Blowjob

95. Amy’s List

96. Supposed To

97. Landing Places

98. Wear and Tear

99. Nightingale

100. Boynton Beach Genesis

101. How much

102. Oracle

103. What

104. Thesis

105. Judgment

106. Ghost

107. Pandemic

108. Basil

109. RSVP

110. Newfoundland

111. Jigsaw Mandela

112. On the Road

113. In the Beginning

114. Gestural Painting

115. As We Know It

116. Home Recipe

117. A Tale Told

118. Gecko

119. Rock of Ages

120. L’Shana Tova

121. In lieu of

122. Reverie

123. Gift

124. Tumbalalika

125. Come dance

126. There

127. House Tours

128. It

129. Caterwaul

130. Off the Hook

131. Folding Flowers

132. You

133. Leda and the Swan

134. The Remains of the Day

135. Called Back

136. Factory Settings

137. Baal

138. Weltschmerz

139. The Second Coming

140. Newfoundland

141. The First Day

142. Laureate

143. Aubade

144. Grave Stone

145. Celebrating Columbus

146. Message in a Bottle

147. Ergo Sum

148. Song

149. Tree in the Forest

150. Something

151. Being There

152. Blind

153. From the edge of the galaxy

154. Finger Lickin’ Good

155. Breaking News

156. Canticle of the Creatures

157. Reading your poetry

158. To Tell the Truth

159. Halloween

160. Critique

161. Eucharist

162. More than

163. As Is

164. Sapiens

165. Rainbow

166. Poem

167. In the Yard

168. Trick

169. Here and There

170. Soap Water

171. Ice

172. Invite

173. Piece of Cake

174. Panta Rhei

175. If

176. Seeing Eye Dog

177. Under the Sun

178. Canzone Napolitano

179. Rafters

180. Bulb

181. Old House

182. Catechism 101

183. You could say

184. Calico

185. Waiting for the Rapture

186. Loren

187. Wintering Flowers

188. Under the Stars

189. Swan Song

190. Out There

191. Vermin

192. And Eve

193. And for All That

194. Being here

195. Doily

196. Argument from Design

197. Here

198. And for all this

199. The Height Of

200. A Moment in Time

201. Let Us

202. Pup

203. After-bird

204. Hermit

205. Prayer

206. Fly

207. Sunt lacrimae rerum

208. Forever Amber

209. All in a Day

210. Death was always something

211. Poetry Consultation

212. Wagon Train

213. Anodyne

214. Brave New World

215. Advent

216. Garden

217. Magi

218. Words

219. Garden Holocaust

220. Supernova

221. Say You Say Me

222. Mind

223. Poetry

224. In the Year of Our Lord

225. Black and Blue

226. And God Said Increase and Multiply

227. Wisdom 101

228. Song

229. Before I let the world

230. Needs You

231. Lang Syne

232. Bouquet

233. The Thing Is to Rejoice

234. Cherries

235. Diagnostic

236. The Night Before

237. Diving Instructions

238. Pillow Talk

239. Flower

240. La Condition Humaine

241. Holiday Flower

242. Auto-da-fe

243. Mourner’s Kaddish

244. Weeding

245. Where the Music Was

246. Making Poetry

247. Anthem for a New Day

248. When the Saints Go Marching In

249. House Guest

250. Passages

251. Zero

252. In the News

253. Flower

254. Aubade

255. Pluribus et Unum

256. Shekhinah

257. Invocation

258. Amaryllis

259. Stupid Bird

260. Weight Watchers Koan

261. Plant

262. Weatherman

263. Ray, after the Service

264. Euclid’s Bare Bottom

265. Dot

266. Defining Poetry

267. Onomastics

268. Commandments

269. Echo

270. Phylum

271. Rose

272. As They Are

273. Sewing Kit

274. It’s

275. ZzzQuill

276. The Idea of Absence

277. Alpha Genesis

278. Gardening Flowers

Poetry as Revenge

In Search of Haunted Chambers

About the Author

for Ronnie

whose love makes

every moment extraordinary

FOREWORD

Poetry might be defined as the extraordinary ordinary that happens when some piece of the world delivers itself to you, reveals its wonder and radiance in the middle of what you are usually doing, in the context of the street you are always on, and from any person or thing that was always there, but you didn’t see them before. As one poet (Anne Luterman) states it: "The whole world keeps whispering or shouting to you,/ nibbling your ear like a neglected lover," and still another (Barbara Crooker): "But everything glorious is around us already."

Writers have named these instances of insight as epiphanies and assert that these moments of all-at-once seeing and noticing fill you with great and intense feeling and you suddenly know what is and isn’t important and want to stop doing what you are doing, be in some other way than you are usually being, and be someone other than you usually are:

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way. Emily Dickinson

—for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. Rainer Maria Rilke

This collection records such epiphanies, instances of poetry, moments of extraordinary ordinary insights that have happened to me in the course of living my life as usual over the past year —the events that occurred in it concentrated and highlighted even more by the Coronavirus pandemic. These are moments when the mind and spirit abstracts from everyday objects, situations and chains of events seminal and universal truths about our existence as sentient creatures evolved to awareness over the