Umbriate Press Poetry

Poem for J.B.

How many years might it take 
For one who suffers young
To become old in friendship
With sadness that turns to pain,
to praise affliction in
Love with misery clinging to 
Memory that lives to forget?

If I were a tree in
The dark womb of your mind
I think a hundred years
Of solitude would be such sunlight
Beneath your shadow 
That comfort would not
Yet be night but
The upward turn of your smile
Advancing skyward
In the presence of a pleasing 
Moment once revealed in
Something resembling a joyful
Leaf falling in reverse 
To land gently back upon the limb
That tried so hard with the wind
To shed its own youth.

     E.L.

Poem for Jing and Her Piano

The music,
as if a murmuring imago 
of delicate fingers
through the arm to 
shoulders and back slightly bent
is as if unnamable
in the painterly way 
it plays to and in the ear
as if one could paint 
from sound as a 
meandering passageway 
might to the 
horizon of its canvas see itself 
as waves of rhythm
become the gentle hands that
rustle pages of notes.

It is in this place, the
space where you are 
as I listen to you 
fill the air
turning sign to music
and wisely brushing away the dust
of time in timelessness 
with the sound of piano,
that is etched on a note or pause
an image of delicate fingers.

   Eric Loveland