They Look Like Asphodel

Easter 2025

I reach up to the top shelf of the cupboard
and on a whim take down a dinner plate
I last used fifty years ago, when you
were still alive, and you and I were lovers.

A calico in cobalt blue and pearlware
white, it pictures blossoms, leaves, and buds
entwined in dense array across its surface,
and all in two-tone, not like living flowers.

I go to set the table, and I see
your right thumb, rising half-moon in the nail,
and then your hand and wrist, made flexible
and strong by years of handling the reins.

Your body makes its way then, back to me,
lithe again and easy in its closeness,
leaning in, the placing of a plate –
the motion warms me, feeling your acceptance.

I touch the surface with my fingertips
and feel the pattern raised on the ceramic:
leaves, stems, and blossoms, made to look alive,
although they never lived. And cannot die.

A Pure Tone

Andres Segovia, Symphony Hall, Boston, 1967

When the tale is told that Buddy Bolden
could be heard across Lake Ponchartrain,
I readily believe it – not because
all sound carries better over water,

but because it tells me that his tone
was pure, and I know from experience
the truth of this. Although Symphony Hall
is prized for its acoustics, every sound,

though treated well, is treated differently.
And while I found my seat was up against
the back wall of the room, deep underneath
the overhanging balcony, the stage

so far away, I wasn’t disappointed.
I knew there were no bad seats in the house.
But since I had to strain my eyes to see
the portly figure of Segovia

enter from the wings, guitar in hand,
be seated on a lone chair, place his foot
upon the little box before him, settle
his instrument into his close embrace,

and play his first clear notes, I didn’t know
how they could leap from silence at my ear,
their secrets told in utter confidence,
distinct and present, meant only for me.

My distance to him disappeared at once,
as though we were in the confessional.
It was his tone that made this so, so finely
wrought at his hands, a lifetime’s worth of purpose.

It is the daily humbling, the care
taken in layering of will, that grows
your tone, as personal as heartbeat, breath.
A pure tone is your first, and final, truth.

This Solstice

December 21, 2025

The earth is not a sphere.
Its axis is not straight.
The seasons of the year
may start too soon, too late.

The light and dark contend,
usurp each other’s place.
Each gains an upper hand
that time will soon erase.

Imbalance rules both day
and night, and holds them fast.
When one has greatest say,
its moment will not last.

Night’s power must decline
as day declares its sway.
It will return with time,
but darkness cannot stay.

Star Child Memory

That was the summer that I broke my leg
when my sneaker lace got caught up in
the spokes of my new Schwinn, and I went flying.

She was making Shocking Pink in Malta;
we didn’t tell her until after she got home.
By then the cast was off, and all she said

was how my leg was awfully white and skinny.
We knew if Dad had told her, she’d have come
back home right away, career be damned.

And that’s just it: we needed her career,
and she did too. If she’d come home, she would
have been a mess, and my leg still be broken.

That’s just the way it was. We understood.
My Dad was home, so I wasn’t alone.
It really was the best for all concerned.

Like it or not (and even they don’t like it,
but they’re powerless to change), an artist
just has different needs, and rules to follow.

But nowadays, when I see Shocking Pink,
made in that summer fifty years ago,
the scene she has with some slick kid, who plays

a crippled urchin on the street, the moment
when her face shifts from a deep concern
into a radiant grin of having helped,

I say to myself “There’s the smile I missed
that summer. Even though I have to share it
with the world – I know it’s meant for me.”

The Dresser

Do I miss the days hope wore your shape
and sat with me, a little out of sight,
but always there where I could turn my head
and seeing you so close, be comforted?

Back then, hope spoke of promise, murmuring
of memories to come, lending your look
to moments I could easily imagine,
and I could taste a future with your flavor.

However promising, a hope is not
a promise. What I saw in you has proved
a well-chosen disguise, meant to display
its seeming substance in a fetching shape.

Now hope is in the wind, evaporated,
gone from my vicinity. It has
no face, no form. The future makes no promise.
It’s gone back to the dressing room to choose.

The New News and the Old News

The new news and the old news, unalike
as weeds and woods, confuse me nowadays.
Time was, the nows were more or less the same,
and you could get adjusted to the ways

things were, before the landscape changed, became
a view wholly unrecognizable.
The woods were growing, but they didn’t move;
their alterations weren’t sizeable.

Surrounding hills took time to wear away;
no valley was exalted overnight.
Now weeds are everywhere, and they spring up
so quickly; every day they choke my sight.

I haven’t time to take them in, to learn
what they can mean, before they teem
anew, and make it difficult to see
the old growth, through the way they make it seem.

Where once surprise was new, it now is old;
what clearly moved us then has been obscured.
Our nows have overtaken us, and all we knew
about the future cannot be assured.

© Al Basile, all rights reserved.