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Monday, January 18, 2021

Sunset at the Reservoir (a Covid Poem)



On a January evening,
cut-glass wind stinging,
the gap where a storm
dropped hundred-foot pines
trumpets a pending show.
West toward the reservoir
a stone-littered trail
clambers beside a rushing aqueduct.
The pond, a cellophane scrim of ice
traps sky in its clear container.

Since spring,
endurance measures in increments.
Fourteen days of quarantine,
six weeks since I saw our daughter,
eight months since you passed.
But here, by frozen water,
minutes fade to 
sable brush strokes,
filaments of yellow gold, 
arctic pink to blush
a gradient wash
as the horizon renders
one timeless certainty.
The light is always better
after the sun goes down.

Liza Carens Salerno


Monday, January 11, 2021

What January Brings


Cast-iron radiators
hammer before dawn.
Without glasses,
poor vision blurs the morning,
digital numbers haloed in red,
the silhouette on the bureau,
my jewelry box or,
last night's reading?
An image, framed by window,
develops like a vintage photograph
and awake now, I listen
to duct-work detonating
with small explosions,
a vent in the kitchen
clanging in reply.
I try to match
my breathing to 
the rhythm
but there's no tempo,
only familiarity—
the wheezing furnace
as reluctant to wake as I,
on this frozen day
when warming pipes
are my only companions.

Liza Carens Salerno
January 2021