Winter Sunset

Winter Sunset

Grace Centanni

Dark twilight — clear and snapping cold —
floods the wind-cleared void where snow
was hanging thick, between the fields
of fallen snow and ragged stars above.
We go toward supper.

Sixteen hundred and eighty minutes later (longitude: west)
palms thread a pale sky blushing
toward night, a desert chill
droops down, the lemon-colored west
brightens a bank of restaurant windows.

Our conversation sits upon the scaffolding
of poetry, an alto harmony
balanced between the bright soprano
of sleepless laughter, the bass line sung
by winter wind, by silverware
on cafeteria plates, by corduroy
and scuffed and salt-grimed shoes under the table. Strange

to talk of poetry floating free from content,
to track a love that has no bulky shape
reflected on the darkened windowpane.

Standing alone in a parking lot at evening,
I sing the alto bare to a glowing sky
against which everything becomes a silhouette.
I left real bodies east, where there was need
for coats and sweaters bulked on others’ frames
to keep my own mind warm, where talk
of poetry stood in for coffee, where
frozen in silent ice I disbelieved
in ice except for keeping memory fresh.

Now
the stars are out, the windows lit, the hymn
begun. The winter evening darkens.

---

Grace Centanni
Poet & Mother

Grace Centanni lives and writes in northern Michigan. She has been published in The Tower Light, The St Anne's Review, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.

Photography by Lorenzo Hamers