Ric Carfagna


from Symphony No.8

(13.7 billion years)

-31-

At some point
a world is
remembered
from archetypal structures
disassociated from thought
where doorways enter
to intersect
an unconscious reality
fleshed out
in shadows of statuary dust
“it is here we thought of birth”
where glandular geometries
fill an eye’s annular cavity
ameliorating the view
from a womb’s delimiting cage
where an implicate order
is assumed
amid a debris field’s terrestrial expanse
yet it is
unreasonable to think this
dream defines (a) reality
observing the untenable flow
of an ocean’s edge
or the stain which remains
an imposing blackness
on the otherwise
unblemished page
“it is here we thought of death”
bearing the weight
of ages frozen
in the cadaver’s desiccated veins
or a vision of crows
invading a culled orchid field
as the spherical burrs
of a winter descend


-45-

At evening
a skyscraper
of alabaster and jade
visions
of grey clouds
gathering on rooftops
voices
indistinct
amorphous
ghosts
of canaries
of coalmines
of life-force
draining thorough a doorway
the invisible
threads
forming
the unraveling tapestry
defining night
as a singular
dream
a dimensional gateway
a sleeping mind
beneath eyes of lead
a transient apparition
through an opaque veil


-54-

Small windows
showing changes
of seasons
of deforestation
of mountains
removed to the sea
of a mirrored wall’s
reflecting
shadows
elongating
the little light left
at the far edge
of the field
somewhere else
grey walls
let in
no illumination
yet here
a night light glows
with none
but one
to notice
the ambient
outflowing
weight of empty spaces
or a wind
down corridors
where dreams are
rooms of doorways
and absence a form
of presence
embraced

Ric Carfagna was born & educated in Boston Massachusetts.
He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently Symphonies Nos.1, 4 & 6 published by Chalk Editions and Symphonies Nos. 2 & 7 published by Argotist Press.
His poetry has evolved from the early radical experiments of his first two books, Confluential Trajectories and Porchcat Nadir, to the unsettling existential mosaics of his multi-book project Notes On NonExistence.
Ric lives in rural central Massachusetts with his wife, cellist Mary Carfagna and daughters, Emilia and Aria.
 
 
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