Selected Work

          by Robert Covelli









          NAPTIME

          For Robbo and Mz. D
            1.

          My window is grainy
          The day is gray,
          And a poet comes to mind,
          Ageless and inspired,
          Indifferent to epochs
          And lost in the Sanskrit
          Of the world at large:
          That oak tree and a blue Honda
          Parked in its shade.
          Rain has puddled at the curb.
          One Beagle creates a tributary
          By a muddy red hydrant nearby,
          And an ancient Iraqi woman
          Pauses sadly a the corner,
          Waiting on the traffic of history,
          As clear to her as the poet's
          Vision of her lover is in her
          Fanciful lucid mind. Laboring
          In the bowels of Mammon is he
          And bored.

            2.

              A boy and 2 girls
          Maybe 5th graders, 10 years old
          At most, halt across the street,
          Rain sprinkling their school clothes,
          Anxious, giggling and incorruptible
          In their eternal moment.
          The poet stiffens, their audience,
          For this unfolds in her imagination.
          The kids wait on cessation of cars,
          Delicate on WASPy, Dominican and African toes,
          Holding one another back.

            3.

          My poet's ancient woman
          Bows under the cares of a century
          Unconcealed today in her felt tradition
          Of perplexity and pears gone bad
          In her kitchen window at home,
          Of struggle and dark streets, horror
          Of acculturated unconcern around her:
          These are mammon's waste,
          Which men call money.
          My poet longs for tender limbs,
          A dream of daffodils and drink,
          Imagining her own soul as frantic
          As her lover's, indentured for a wage.

            4.

          Children scream, and a car
          Rushes through rainwater.
          Their scream is excitement,
          Anticipation, a curse on every
          Vehicle in this city of man
          That passes by them when
          They want to bolt and dash,
          And the ancient woman, implicit
          Student of all of Eliot and his
          Weariness, laughs out loud,
          Raises her cautionary hand,
          Inclines her loving brow their way,
          Sign of this microcosm that is
          Without borders.

            5.

              My poet closes
          Her eyes on a happy edition
          Of Rich's Common Language,
          3 pages dogeared, another underlined,
          Too poignant those, such touching
          Power in simplicity and the compassion
          That is her truth: whose truth?
          Once a driver of Red Cross trucks
          I work half days, crippled now
          By imprecise American bombs
          A decade past on Kuwaiti borders
          That undulated in oily flames.
          My desk at work is a basement office
          Where I gather news of atrocities.
          I've cashed my disability check.
          Washington paid for my dinner.
          And I pull a grimy shade on my window,
          Sleep tugging as if on my hand,
          Morphic whispers of a Heaven
          On the beat up sofa in my front room,
          While Coltrane sings, oh softly!,
          Of his favorite things,
          And Yo Yo Ma, who follows
          Like a settled breath of air,
          Plays Bach all alone.

          Robert Covelli has published poems, stories and excerpts in the Poetry Review, Tracks, Mad Blood, the Inkslingers Review and Pedestal Magazine. His novella and three stories, Tom Fool & Three More, was selected as finalist in competition for the Ulysses Award from the Institute of Independent Literature. He lives in Santa Fe NM with his wife and daughter.

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