Claudio Salvucci: A Day of Creation

A Day of Creation

Midnight
Mount Desert Island, Maine

High amid mountains the rounded moon’s orb
dove white reclines in the sable-down sky,
tingled by silk mists and whispery cirrus.

Like a milk bud filled she blooms forth alight
swelling the sea-spume, flushing the clefts,
heaving the tidewaters, rising and rolling—

In waves, in waves—and westward she eases,
in long gentle ebbing, her mensal procession,
a cyclical splendor which dwindles and swells.

Dawn
Assateague Island, Maryland

Over steel-gray seas the east surging sun’s
dawn-heralds dapple on winnowing waves,
heaven’s blush blooming in deep wines and peaches.

Blood-flushed he breaches the grand-hued horizon
and toils up rising, fire-breath roiling,
urging him higher, scrambling and surging—

Succeeds—and relents his ascent in the heavens,
felling his life bringing shimmers below him,
glimmering silvers reflecting on wave-swells.

Midday
Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Aground in a hollow, the earth’s lap abounding,
burgeons out fertile with seed-sprouted saplings,
in lush umber mound-caps and round olive knaps.

Fevered she heaves from the sun’s heavy luster
and sweat-laden spreads as her broodlings develop,
her cradle distending, kicking and quick’ning—

She winces in pain—and the inner strain passes,
as new mass she carries within her to flourish
nourished by web-veining tendrils of rain.

Evening
Arches National Park, Utah

Over mandarin boulders, the faint planet grains,
kindle when solar light drains below sands,
bright in the ink-sphere as heaven’s rite nears.

Jeweled they fix on the ruling ecliptic,
and prettily sing forth in sweet timid reverence,
hymns of devotion, each glimmer adoring—

And mirthfully circle—those virgins celestial,
an affectionate service for their sister maternal,
and her star-spawned harvest, children of dawn.