Poetry | Winter 2023
Two Poems
by John Muro
Reassessment
Unperturbed by coastal gales,
a tern glides past with a fluid
grace I can only envy when
suddenly it rises and arcs back-
wards against the wind as if
it was telling itself to return
and set aside its daytime tasks
and to look more closely at
the Gorgon wreaths of bladder
wrack, cauldrons of tidal foam
and soft-spooling eddies of
nickel-blue waters, and reconsider
the silent plenty of light that’s
been spliced from the waves
and then applied like glaze upon
the peninsula’s coarse under-
belly of granite, festooned with
periwinkles, snails and purple
colonies of mussels, and even
the near-distant beds of sea
roses that are clipped by wind
and curve in a florid crescent
away from the harbor, realizing
this stretch of shoreline merits
more than a four-square fly-by
and nautical salutations composed
of strident sharps and flats.
Inheritance
Wasn’t it, though, a solemn
and peaceful place where walks
near day’s end instilled a reawakening
of self and a certain wonder for the
smaller miracles of creation?
Though now, years later, silence
and sanctuary are both casualties
of progress and the snow-soft
swaths of fern, mountain laurels,
and groves of birch that had settled
sideways have all been brushed
aside by a wind as dark as pitch,
and even stars have been pilfered
from heaven and placed upon
a garish canvas of sodium light
and evening’s vespers no longer
drip from branches to ear like
an unexpected grace but from
the cacophony of horns and
low-throttled engines and the
dull hum and crackle of currents
that scurry across these dark
deltas littered with poles and
wires that stretch out towards
the near horizon like misshaped
equations designed to measure
the expanse between the world
we had hoped for and what has
been salvaged and left to us.
Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2021 and, more recently, for the Best of the Net in 2022, John Muro is a resident of Connecticut and a graduate of Trinity College. His two volumes of poems, In the Lilac Hour (2020) and Pastoral Suite (2022), were published by Antrim House and both are available on Amazon. John’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Acumen, Barnstorm, Euphony, MORIA, pacificReview, River Heron and Sky Island. Instagram: @johntmuro