-after one year in isolation/Feb 2021
We often rose before the light,
Mornings after a dream-adorned sleep
had calmed the day’s swelter, or the
hushed world became encased in snow.
We drank black coffee with grace,
gently coaxing the dark from us.
A warm palmful of sublime comfort,
and the gratitude for another dawning.
We sometimes spoke of the day,
and wondered about its plan.
We confronted the news, and
offered our thanks for its distance.
We spent the first hours, attending
many matters that we knew
could just as well have waited.
Life without application is no life.
In the long afternoons,
we found our pleasures in words
assembled in books, that paid
no mind to solitude or misgivings.
We napped in a vessel of light,
two cats composed at our feet,
The sun upon shuttered eyes, still
sensing the dim of passing cloud.
As always, the hushed harmonies
of water sliding down and down,
Effortlessly finding a course beyond
impediments large and small.
We watched the steam rising up
from stone mugs of Darjeeling tea.
Music came off a dance of fingers,
and the many colors of consciousness.
While we were not paying them mind,
calendar pages meandered on their own.
The cuckoo clock we found on a square
in a Swiss storybook one lustrous day,
gathered the hours with a benevolent song.
Daniel Thomas Moran, former Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, New York, born in New York City on March 9, 1957, is the author of twelve volumes of poetry, the most recent of which, In the Kingdom of Autumn, was published by Salmon Poetry in County Clare, Ireland in 2020 and Balancewas published in India by Cyberwit.net also in 2020. His previous collections were Here in the Afterlife (2017 Integral Contemporary Literature Press at The University of Bucharest in Romania). Translation by Lidia Vianu,A Shed for Wood (2014 Salmon Poetry), De La Hilo La Willow Pond (2009 Contemporary Literature Press and also by Translation Café at The University of Bucharest translated to Romanian by Iulia Gabriela Anchidin Miron), Nieve de Agosto y otros poemas (2014 Diaz Grey Editores) (translated by Mariela Dreyfus of New York University), Looking for the Uncertain Past, was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2006 at The University of Salzburg in 2006. Other collections include Dancing for Victoria (1991), Gone to Innisfree (1993), Sheltered by Islands (1995), In Praise of August (Canio’s Editions 1999), From HiLo to Willow Pond (Street Press 2002), The Light of City and Sea-An Anthology of Suffolk County Poetry (Street Press 2006 as Editor), The Book of Moran (Asinine Poetry 2007). He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Biological Sciences from Stony Brook University (1979) and a Doctorate in Dental Surgery from Howard University (1983). He has read widely at bookstores, libraries and universities throughout New York, New England and Long Island and has done readings in Ireland, Italy, Austria, and Great Britain as well as at The Library of Congress and The United Nations.
His website is https://www.danielthomasmoran.net/
Latest posts by Daniel Thomas Moran
(see all)
