Edvard Munch Starry Night (1922.) Courtesy Munch Museum "Munch : Van Gogh" at Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. |
Amongst All Things I Cherish You Most
Amongst
all things I cherish you most:
silent,
deserted tracks,
paths
winding steeply up
to
the hazy tops, murmurs of footsteps
muffled
by silent slopes,
ascensions
to sylvan hermitages.
When
the first snow
shuts
all man within their weary
dwellings,
then even the timid fox
sticks
its head out of the woods,
sniffing
with its pointed nose the air
in
the scant November dusk.
Similarly
a vagrant finds some peace
and
no longer despairs in his wandering,
when
the blackening earth closes the corolla
of
the horizon, and like ancient weeping,
the
oblivious, sooty sky
is a
mute blanket, unutterable.
(The Appalachians, November
2013)
From "Midnight 30, American Poems," by A. Baruffi, published by LiteraryJoint Press, is available as e-book on Amazon Kindle, iBookstore, NOOK Book, Kobo, and Lulu.
Midnight thirty: half-hour past
"Geisterstunde," as it is still called in the broody hillsides hamlets
of inner, rural Pennsylvania. In the deep stillness of the night, the
tongue is loose, the eye quick, the ear alert, and the mind finally
conducive to grasp all that in daylight is hidden. It is only at that
time that truth is said, or whispered...
"In this surprising work of modern American literature, like a shimmering, wild creek under the full moonlight, the vein of poetry taps into the inexhaustible resources and riches of the land, and runs with inspiration and wisdom..."
"In this surprising work of modern American literature, like a shimmering, wild creek under the full moonlight, the vein of poetry taps into the inexhaustible resources and riches of the land, and runs with inspiration and wisdom..."