Mary Louise Mazzocco


A Widow Speaks

I saw you in a dream, so close
I could touch you. So close
I could forget the dank musk
of solitude in sheets rank
with sweat. So close
I no longer feared
the haunted walkways of my days--
the frayed stairs where you stumbled,
the dock spellbound with stain
where you hit your head. The undertow
of the bleak loch obliging you
to agelong slumber.

Did you have time to wonder why
your true love betrayed you, why
your limbs so lithe in sport and robust
in love no longer served your will?

I had time, so much time, to wonder why
you dallied with the trim sail, the bold wave,
the far horizon.


A Tree On Califa Street

Its branches beckon me
each time I pass, a plea
to return to the womb
of its age-old branches,
canopied myth ever green
like the fields of our childhood
games, innocent of the broken earth
where the tree's gnarled and twisted roots
rise up to meet its leaves,
dropped like tears of sorrow
for siblings never born.

-both poems previously published at Roses And Rainbows


Oblivion

Sleep descends the well of oblivion.
Dreams weave their spell in oblivion.

Grateful for nothingness, gather mein
to the dark shell of oblivion.

When I drift in somnambulant bliss,
it's an easy sell--oblivion.

Fitfulness brings tribulation when
devils excel in oblivion.

The gray dawn comes too soon. Mary's dreams
must be expelled to oblivion.

-previously published at 2005 Ghazals


Night Trains

They echo over wilderness and urban dark.
Their rhythm haunts reverie, taunts the wanderer:
Leave your dreams asleep in their beds.
Answer the prairie's call, explore the allure
of mountains and sacred adobes.
Follow iron strength over rails that guide
an ordained journey. Heed the mournful warning at grade crossings.

Fear for the untimely traveler who learns
in the dawn's soft hour--the warning's meant for him,
just for him.

-previously published at Poetic Diversity