John C. Mannone

LEAVING SHADOWS

Green-brown mottle of khaki clothes
camouflages him sniping in foliage,
late noon Mekong sun sweating
through the long Banyans of Vietnam.

He lies still on limbs without limbs
leaves stripped like chaff,
machine guns strafing shadows.

Choppers find him among pale leaves
tinted red as in eclipse of moon,
then the moon moved leaving shadows
on the limb illumined by the sun.

                        ~~~

Jungle shadows flicker with the vertigo
of recollected sounds, even in New York,
each time he passes under branches
limned in lazy sun. The umbral elms

and maples transform to Mangroves
through the spokes,
the shiny spokes of his chair, reflecting
each memory leaving shadows.

* * *

A SWEET KIND OF BLINDNESS

I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful
than a lifetime of nothing special.
-Steel Magnolias, 1989

I never thought of sugar as a poison
of sweet dreams and visions
of family or its bittering of body parts—

arms purpled with tracks
vestiged from some machine
that flushes urine from you,

every nerve charged with electric waves
from surge of chemistry
coaxing tears that blind me, too.

I squeeze your hand; close my eyes so I can see
the same black screen on my retina
and let memories paint images there.

There, your smiles blur with saline drops
reflect as foveal mirrors, fading in and out
as sanguine rings from squint of pressure—

a sweet kind of blindness
that lets you see the magic of a kiss,
not just the feel of it,

waiting for the touch of alchemy
to smooth sweet seconds into hours,
lead into gold.

John C. Mannone, a professor of physics and nuclear consultant in east Tennessee, is widely published. Some of his poetry is published (or will appear) in Iodine Poetry Journal, Thrift Poetic Arts Journal, Bat Creek Journal, Astropoetica, as well as in anthologies: eVokability: The Walking Project and Knoxville Christmas 2008.