HOT TEA AND WOOL SWEATERS:MICHAEL
PAUL LADANYI
In the quiet, mumbling gray of dawn's
beginning, is the time the dead are
most alive, inclined to murmur good
morning in remembered voices.
I have almost heard them in longing,
chipping sounds of silence, like old
men shuffling about their chimney
houses, down long, dusty,
rag-rug covered hall floors,
from kitchen to front room,
a saucered cup of hot tea in hand,
noble in their paradox of being between,
yet believing themselves on the
living side of shadow. They sit
in old, brown, shawl covered
comfortable chairs, warm,
green, wool sweaters buttoned to
the neck, staring through December
frosted windows, watching coal
black ravens perched in bare oaks,
above snow piled to the second
rail of the wooden fences that
surround their front gardens,
remembering things they never
did and places they've never
been, while listening to me
almost hear them, through
cracks in morning's thin quiet.
Michael Paul Ladanyi's poetry has appeared
over 200 times during the last two years, in print and
online magazines in the US and abroad. Among them: Borderlands:
Texas Poetry Review, Joey and the Black Boots, Snow
Monkey, Poetry Super Highway, The Pedestal Magazine,
Poems Neiderngasse, Circle, etc. His chapbook, Palm
Shadows, was released in June 2002 by Purple Rose Publications,
and his chapbook, Spelling Crows of Winter, will be
released by Pudding House Publications.
