Three Poems by SR Inciardi

SENTIMENT

The ocean breeze swipes the water 
page after page turned in waves of succession, 

one after another sweeping the air and stirring it 
in the sounds of coming and going. 

The waves move as the wind dictates: 
some taller, some more shallow, still others less certain. 

These are the waves of times, when Fall just begins 
and the air knows nothing of Summer— 

in days blessed by what came but were cursed 
when they left, with just the newest day now with me, 

where only what left is what I wanted— 
where only waves of its time came and are now over. 

Water comes then recedes motion upon motion, 
each one pulled from the edge of the sea,

each one returned to where it once came. 
I do not see its subtle direction-change 

except its withdrawal, except to see them  
extracted in distant sentiments of their own. 

Can it be that this is what was always meant to be, 
and did I miss more than I could have remembered?

Did I not notice them when they were there one after another  
in chances I hadn’t realised were given? 

But now I see I was wrong: each day the shore 
doesn’t forget each wave’s sentiment, 

each wave holds its own where there is no end to them, 
where I’m offered a memory wrapped by the pain 

of their leaving, but stays bound to every one 
where I hold on to the gift each one carried. 

DESIGNS

so much of what consumes me  
is mired in redundancy     mental gymnastics 
wound ‘round and ‘round like an old watch spring 
and even when encased as permanent 
and making promises of permanence     revolve 
with the earth in an air of inconsistency—
both tensioning and reverting 

maybe sorrow was designed this way     maybe 
it was honed from some common metal 
where fissures stayed hidden but are the cause 
of its denigration     over and over 
daylight comes     deepens     then fades 
mired in a cycle where change speaks only to change       
‘round and ‘round in steps that hold its own brightness  


A STEP AT A TIME

I can’t walk far 
once sunlight begins leaving, 
once the sweet music 
of unnamed birds 
begins to end, after rain 
fell again in the morning 
and clouds regrouped 
in early evening, the day without 
a before or after, only itself 
with two hands 
giving all I come to breathe—  
the two of us here 
in waning sunlight 
remembering: another day 
only mine to take, 
only the day to give—
whether I cherished it 
or had choices when it ended, 
a day in the light 
that remains 
with an intensity of its own.