Casual Glance
By John Zedolik

 

An ex’s Facebook photo shows a glass
of red wine in her hand at the end

 

of a phoenix-tatted arm, a deep symbol,
she explains on the virtual page,

 

of a rebirth from loss, whose raw edge
vino rosso may help dull.

 

As I recall, she always did like her reds and whites,
so I helped her on occasion finish a bottle,

 

those nights a few decades gone
when we were together within spring and summer.

 

Now I manage a glass—or, rarely—two a week
with savory dinners, wiser, I suppose, with accumulated years

 

that have squeezed out the grapes
to leave unadulterated water flowing

 

through my veins to wet the flowers
my wife has nurtured in our seasons

 

that return and return—which my brief
three months with the other never will.

 

 

Divergence

We cannot meet again, forty years
after the touch and passion, as your flesh

 

has joined with another to produce
new—alien from any factor of me

 

in the hot equation, so leaving me cold,
compounded upon the double score

 

that has sundered us following the initial
flash in front, back seat, and occasionally bed

 

when we could acquire one as illicit
adolescents looking to lie up as adults

 

that we now are—having overcome
the thrill and left now with the ice

 

of retrospect that might thaw a rivulet
at least of running wonder what if

 

limbs and hearts had grown intertwined
like oh so close seeds and roots

 

under tallying seasons of different skies

 

John Zedolik from US is adjunct English professor at Chatham University and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has published poems in such journals as Abbey (USA), The Bangalore Review (IND), Commonweal (USA), FreeXpresSion (AUS), Orbis (UK), Paperplates (CAN), Poem (USA), Poetry Salzburg Review (AUT), Third Wednesday (USA), Transom (USA), and in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In 2019, he published his first full-length collection, entitled Salient Points and Sharp Angles (WordTech Editions), and in 2021 he published another collection, When the Spirit Moves Me (Wipf & Stock), which consists of spiritually themed poems. In 2023, he published his third collection, Mother Mourning (Wipf & Stock), and he has just published his fourth collection, The Ramifications (Wipf & Stock), which consists of five long, experimental poems. All these collections are available on Amazon.