Paul Ilechko – Three Poems
Her Seasons
Ice cracking, splitting, sliding. A whiteness
that tricks the eye. Booted and bejeweled,
shuffle-sliding across the desolation. She
will not be impeded by mere weather.
Blossoms breathe the littoral air, a serene
and genial efflorescence, a multiplication
of life enveloping her. The burgeoning
warmth unencumbers, disrobes, placates.
Parched solstice cracks and yawps as she
passively ripens. Unfazed, embittered,
deliberate. Equidistant, yet poles apart. Her
liquid resonance, smooth as soap.
Dwindling, even as pigment flares, rupturing
the cleaving fibrous membrane. Days
of umber beckon her, the chill hardens,
penetrates, promising little, offering less.
The Tomato Plant
A somber, rooted corner.
Slatted planks lean precariously,
approximating a fence.
Overlaid with harsh light,
violent black edges of shadow.
A tangle of growth, a viridian imbroglio.
Clandestine in this abundance,
the pompous, fleshy spheroid.
Radiant scarlet,
a succulent chromaticism.
Reflecting the laughing cardinal,
gorging on oil-black seed beside his drab mate.
Hedge Apples
The Osage orange stand, gnarled and twisted,
defining boundaries among suburban tracts. These
are ghosts of forgotten farmland. The thorny frames
an overgrown echo of the bushes long ago planted
in careful lines, cattle proof and solid.
Their mottled green fruit still scatter where they fall,
food for creatures now extinct. A hazard to cyclists,
crushed pulp under the wheels of a delivery van. An
unexpected connection between two worlds.
Author’s Statement on Beauty
It’s problematic the word “beautiful” is an adjective, as that leads to people to believe beauty is somehow an intrinsic quality of an object (be that a person, a flower, a piece of music, or whatever). It would be better to think of it as a verb, a transitive verb. To make beautiful. Beauty is a residue from the act of applying love. Without that act of love, beauty will never really exist.
Paul Ilechko was born in England but has lived most of his life in the USA. He currently lives in Lambertville, NJ with his girlfriend and a cat. He has at various times been a visual artist (painting and photography) and a writer of short fiction, with some level of success in both fields. Paul has had poetry accepted by Ibis Head Review and short fiction works by Grab-a-Nickel and Xelas magazines. He has participated in group art shows in London, England, as well as in Princeton, New Brunswick and Metuchen (all NJ).