Davide Trame

Now Then

Spring haze has come,
breaths’ fingers tapping the widespread
lagoon standstill, eyes threading
a gauze of still blue rings.
The dog in the boat yawns, swallows
air and light, waiting
to step on the sandbar.
Now then, despite loss that is always vast
we can sense that space is with us
with sprouts that stick to the earth
and we yawn too and stretch
and swallow the air in the stare of our sandglass
while the first swallows glide down
along the haze’s eyelids’ rims
and skim the glitters of the water-skin.
The island’s hedges are short and trimmed,
buds eyeing us with pointed
sharp irises of green,
in the young, mellow
marrow of the sun.

Tearing

Bora day, straight claws of air
in a breathing swarm on the strand,
you shiver stared at by the blinding sunlight’s teeth.
The world is broken through and sails wide open,
the sky is an almost aching blue that seems
to have never enough of being scraped clean and pierced.
You skirt the undulating line of foam rags,
dried crests bubbling on the hardened sand,
torn sizzling bits swelling in the wind like spun sugar
and with simple jerks cast forth in the roaring
bright emptiness, far beyond all you know now for sure:
your body gaily thrashed forward by the swaying gusts,
your breath and your hammering heart, so close still
and not yet torn apart.