Red Tower

At this height, it looks less
like defeated, more withstood.
Summer’s hottest days
in dwindle, retreating
until the same
as any other battle fought
and survived. I believe
in victory, like acceptance.
More and more a fading
scent of lemon on the wind.
Here, where dusk, the horses,
who come to these hills
to graze in the relative
quiet, the rippling blue
muscle of the herds crossing,
seems so far away.

Medieval Architecture

That was when to lock away
the body came to mean holiness. Then, fear

as a world denied for
forever would shine how stained

glass shines. In many colors. Broken
to be remade. I’m sorry,

I can’t trust a cloister’s quiet
heart. No matter how strong or artfully built

its walls. The kind muddled by trees,
leafless branches that, even today,

could be surrender or just
too early for buds.

The wind dances through the colonnade
all the same. A hidden tapestry,

in which cardinals dart through copse bushes,
and, held for once steady,

the breath is a single gold thread, unfurling
even when we try to look away.

Nicholas Pagano has previously been published in Chronogram, Field Guide, Stone Circle Review, The Windward Review, and elsewhere. He lives and writes in New York.

Image: GrzegorzImielowski, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons