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Late Autumn Woods

The press of green over
and the ritual of leaves

the wood has settled
into its prime dimensions
the lines etched in the light
pouring in from all sides.

Forts and nests abandoned,
the trash exposed.

Walking through
I can now see where the main path ends
and the others
branching off like veins on a leaf.

The palm of a hand
with a well-marked lifeline.
A wood thinned of possibilities.

Yet the sky, bluest in the north
and visible only in snatches before,
has opened up all around me,
as if a fog had lifted at last,
a heavy curtain.

First appeared in When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple
(Papier Mache Press, 1987)

Columbus Sailed into the Unknown

And he could’ve been satisfied
like his father, his mother’s brothers,
his neighbors near the Porta Soprana
to card and spin and weave,
playing one or all three of the Fates,
in the cramped space of a loom,
a room, a city wedged
between the shore and the mountains.
He could’ve been satisfied to set on vellum
the courses other men would follow,
or to ply himself a land-bound sea
in the shuttle of a boat, his life
the plain weave of a sail, and like a sail
subject to the will of the air.

First published in Italian Americana

© All Copyright, Rina Ferrarelli.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.