“Frail is the royal barge, / Autumn the cargo.”
from Robert Hillyer’s The Leaf
In those last hours or days you’ll negotiate
spheres and rays with Galileo,
finally bend the ear of the brother
who forever raced ahead,
revisit an evening on the rock
with the girl in micro shorts and long socks
shivering on the billiard table
as the ocean rolled back
and surrounded you,
the steeple zeroing in on Vesper.
How have our pomps decayed!
goes your song reprised: the chords
ringing from a practice room Bösendorfer
count moments liked stacked dominos.
All those fingerings
worked out until each arpeggio,
each eighth note, quarter or triplet
struck like a printing press key;
hours curved by the metronome
and the clarinet’s corkscrew
until the piece walked
itself with a sailor’s gait
return like the restless night
before the audition –-
divisions gathered in an armada
awaiting subtraction –-
and all the lives in a small world
hanging tight on its result.
David P. Kozinski has been the featured poet in Schuylkill Valley Journal. He won the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, which included publication of his chapbook, Loopholes. His poems have appeared in Apiary, The Broadkill Review,Chiron Review, Confrontation, Fox Chase Review, glimmertrain.com, Margie, and The Rathalla Review, among others. Kozinski was one of ten poets chosen by Robert Bly for a workshop sponsored by American Poetry Reviewand has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. He received Honorable Mention in Philadelphia Poets’ 7thAnnual John & Rose Petracca & Family Award. Kozinski lives in Wilmington, DE with his wife, actress and journalist Patti Allis Mengers.