Last Chance

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

In the dream, the dark figure

enters the room, places his cloaked hands

on my head, and whispers something—

something about my father and his father

and his father, going back generations—something

I need to know—a secret unutterable until

now. Hundreds of miles away, my father,

aware someone is coming, stirs in his bed.

The Day Poetry Was Born

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

The day the banished couple

sat desperately trying to sew

together the fallen leaves of paradise,

was the day poetry was born.

With the first steps they took away

from that garden, poetry became

a mountain of trees, overshadowing

the two they left behind.

Walk now with them.

Remove the unnecessary leaves.

Move in pure sound and naked images.

Say with me: “Fuck the rules!”

And do not grovel at the feet

of any god’s conditional love.

Trust your desires.  Follow Lilith’s way.

She will shelter you from the coming rain.

She will open the better ark of her body,

and invite you in, along with all the others

left to drown.

Adventure with her with the raven’s words.

Let them go in search of land

and hope like hell it’s never found.

Without Fear

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

The ocean spreads out generously

for days of miles.  A small wooden boat

is moored near the shore.  Nets drape

lazily in the water.  The fisherman,

lulled to sleep by the soft buoyancy,

does not know the catch plays

idly in the webbing, jostling the ropes,

without fear.

Keep an Open Mind

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

Blue irises spiral open in slow motion

the silken blades of their standards

and crests, their falls and hefts,

in the morning, in silence, in secret.

A dragonfly holds the swaying reed lightly

as a wish.

A turtle stretches its yellow-painted neck and head

up from the dark pond to get a look around

with its wide, round, military eyes.

Water striders glide across the water

with their long, outstretched symmetrical legs–

they even hop and skate—lighter than Jesus

ever was.

Gold-speckled koi move like dreams.

I step closer and an unseen frog

dash-plops into the shadowed-shallows—

like a lost prayer.

I stand there watching, waiting

for my purpose, for a poem to appear, like

a heron stepping from behind the curtain

of the willow.

How do I live consciously

in this vast, ecology of hope?

How do I answer unknown questions

that swim in my soul? How do I wonder

past my feeling lost in the everything that happens

and why, holding on to a reed of my own?

A black-spotted-orange-fire-colored-

salamander smoothly slips back under

a decomposing log, but not before

pausing to say: “Keep an open mind.

The answer is in the heron’s unfolding wings.”

White Butterfly

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

At the red light,

a woman in the car

next to mine—passenger side—

turns her head,

our eyes meet,

she rolls down her window

as if she wants to say something,

I roll down mine,

she opens her mouth,

(and I swear this happens),

a white butterfly flutters

from her mouth, and rises into the sky,

she stares at me a second,

rolls up her window,

the light turns green,

she drives away.

I swear, I swear,

I saw this happen.

Meditation

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

In the memory

there are many roads

pointing in many directions,

as in a crumpled

piece of paper.

Along each bent furrow

is a tiny clot of ink,

waiting for the warm touch

of necessity

to loosen it, unfold

and spread open

the map, allowing the words

to form, to lift, and scatter, like

a flock of sleeping birds

startled from the trees,

giving the world

what was written down

and forgotten.