In this season of fallen things
you move your play indoors
below, to our basement
like a cave that the first men
might have huddled in
as wind or night beat outside,
genetic mutation seeking them even there
starlight sneaking in through cracks,
the sun they held in awe begetting cellular change
that we would look back upon
and call evolution
and in our cave, you and your tribemates
fingerpaint on the concrete
— a skeleton, a spear, a flower, our dog —
your handprints frozen in an amber of acrylic paint,
a fly’s wingbeats held still for me,
the flint waiting to be struck within you
and with it the fire of life and time begun
as once, from its kernel, the stuff of the universe
exploded and was flung
forever outward
Joe Cilluffo is a practicing attorney who spends his free time writing, weeding his vegetable garden, and playing with his three children. Joe’s poems have appeared in journals such as Philadelphia Poets, The Schuylkill Valley Journal, Apiary, The New Purlieu Review and Adanna Literary Journal. He has been a featured reader at the Moveable Beats Reading Series, the Philadelphia Poets Ethnic Voices series, the Manayunk-Roxborough Arts Center inaugural ekphrastic poetry exhibit, and the Mad Poets Society “A Little Spring Madness” event.