The Feel of a Petal You cannot show me black.
I dare you to find white
that isn’t really gray
dark or light,
or purple or yellow variations,
or really textured surface, in God’s truth.
Close your eyes—even in the thickest night
there’s stuff.
Inspect albinos
and you’ll discover pinkish tints laced all through.
Nor will you find a black man who's pure black,
a white who’s white—there has never been
such a thing precisely
only flesh of variegated hue,
as broad a spectrum as the realm of brown,
all molecules and space and bonds between.
The labels spread the space and weaken bonds
for someone's use. But know the truth:
that black is black and white is white
only in Plato’s merely mental heaven;
brown, neither prescriptive nor defining,
what with so many shades so delicious,
cannot help but be
evocative as poetry.
In Nature, each hue’s spackled with its opposites,
like flowers,
and asks us to step close, breathe in, inspect
the feel of a petal
no matter how exotic
with an inquisitive finger, softly, slowly, humbly,
without our blustery audacity
disturbing our intrepid, natural self,
so as to know the new, foreign and fine.
originally published in
Hive Avenue Literary Review 2020
Night and the Tornado A tornado, sure, is more destructive but
in the long run Night, to me, is crueler.
A tornado dies so that one might rebuild.
When Night retreats it’s only for a half-
day of deflected hours it then dissolves,
reminding me of that one day’s fell swoop
and that you were not here last night, are not
tonight, nor will be here tomorrow night.
* * *
The lights of night—moons, half the time;
stars, when the skies aren’t overcast; and neon—
help me to forget the storm, some nights,
but not you. And when I sight a new star,
or pass a spot we danced or strolled or lolled,
a madness, bittersweet but gentle as
the blanket of night, seems to fold me in
its counterpane with love returned, imagined.
* * *
When the comet came, that year after,
I couldn’t help but blow the thing daft kisses
and give it a name, night after night. Your name.
* * *
And when the weather, or the moisture in
a comrade’s eye, tells of a tornado
somewhere, no matter how far it may be
or how deep it lies buried, veiled within,
I feel the gentle cruelty that burns
and burnishes some living testament
from joyful pangs as silent as the Night
and send out prayers to all the future stars.
originally published (in a different version) in Stickman Review, 2018
Strange Dust You and I—You, the Universal you,
and I in this case quite the royal we—
were born of elements that fell from stars
and grew from them with light and time mixed in,
love, if we're lucky, the extraordinary
ordinary, or the sorry lack
of it. But with this love and light we might
sparkle into radiant jet-black
sunbursts. Here—another one's gone off,
unnoticed by astronomy, unseen
by psychology. An explosion so
private and powerful, egesting such
a powder as from heaven: as between
two thinkers, or two lovers, or two trillion,
or one poet, who, in humility,
has cast his or her starbursts into space,
both inner and outer, for them to be
now lit upon, by chance and time—and you—
you personally this time, who love poetry,
and let yourself be burst upon by me.
originally published in High Plains Register, 2017
BionoteJames B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being
Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and
Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book
Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award. A graduate of Yale and frequent contributor to
Poetry Pacific, he has received a Dana Literary Award, two
Willow Review awards, Storyteller's People's Choice award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels stunned and grateful.
