Two Poems
by Guy D’Annolfo
Replicating cells
When my surgeon confirms an aggressive cancer, I enter
a last minute pact to operate without promise: it's either me
or replicating cells. I never met my great-grandparents, don't know
their names, nothing about them: family die and are forgotten.
I think of my friend Steve, his family, and his six-year fight.
If I can get as long as him, my son would be close to graduating.
Under the weather of this half forecast, half Faustian bargain,
I turn to the woods, where twilight blackens amber rain clouds.
I pass a colonial quarry with a few shafts bored
into abandoned granite at odd angles: rain water has weathered
the canals beyond recognition. Time returns effort with silence.
My son doesn't know my life has become a wager, the body
my only currency. I need enough time to make a difference:
the only term I may win is to love him a little longer.
Uplift and erosion
Crust of earth, beds of soil packed
with greenery coaxed with roots
nudging for moisture, recomposed to fine
silk curtains in a distant
delta. Erosion means nothing
to water that weathers rich
loam from rocks over sundering plates
uplifted against the lure of gravitation. What are growth
rings to a tree? We share fifty
percent of our DNA: who
do we ask the question: parent or relative?
The red oak that borders
my street is chatty with a joyous
swishing in late
fall as leaves brown
and brittle. Of less seasons, we
have answers too:
bildungsroman, impossible
for sessile trunk: but who’s telling trees that flowering
isn't a journey? Equilibrium everywhere
struggles: between
soil and sky, bloom on a stalk, lotus
pink, oblong, more
liquid than substance; only five
common elements make up nearly all
of a human; my wavering earthpitch
turns in the dawn of your warmth,
scent of hay in your hair mingles
desire with compassion; at breakfast you
smile and ask what if? raising a blackberry to my mouth to spike
the oatmeal.
When Guy D’Annolfo isn’t battling impostor syndrome at that dreaded slog called a day job, or kindling a love of Natural History with his son, or accidentally disrupting the peace in a Satipaṭṭhāna class, he’s likely to be found doing what he loves to do most with gratis: poetry. Guy has had poems published by the Cape Cod Times (May, 2022), Chestnut Review (October, 2022), The Courtship of Winds (forthcoming Spring 2023).