Aging
After I gave the old woman an overdue shower—
forced her under water might be the truer fact
as she had not wished to be bathed,
her hair matted, sour bits of dead skin flaking off
legs and arms, she emerged not with gratitude
but meanness: why did you do this to me?
After I dressed her in fresh linens
and fluffed her white hair with warm currents of air,
it occurred to me I had performed this task
forty years ago, helping to arrange a pregnant
version of her for our date night together,
finishing the evening’s preparation
with a wisp of perfume.
*
View from My Train
In open fields west of Venice,
olive-clad hunters wait patiently for game
eyes averted from the ground and its trail
only long enough to acknowledge
the sound of this passing train. Crows
seek their breakfast in the aftermath of human threshing
scouring corn fields, swooping low,
dropping sharply to disappear
among ravaged pale-yellow stalks.
In the cool breath of late autumn,
the sky slate gray horizon to horizon
blackened trees shorn of all color,
I trace again the deathless patterns of repetition
the inexorable journey into winter.
*
Tony Magistrale is professor of English at the University of Vermont. He is the author of three books of poetry, the most recently published is titled More Fun Than Pretty (Moon Pie Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in Harvard Review, Spillway, Chiron Review, Green Mountains Review, South Florida Poetry Review, The Cape Rock, Slipstream, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among other places.
Wonderful poems.