Gray
The sun gives way to the gray
another day – not so different than the last.
The wind is low, but constant
firm and supportive of the light rain.
The trees get no purchase
no sunshine to complete the equation.
So the branches remain bare
leaves just a memory, faded.
The window has not changed shape
or transformed the view at all.
Somehow, I imagined that rectangle might soften
its edges or increase its depth.
Nothing is given to you
there are only decisions.
Morgan Bazilian
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
Poetic perception: a window over the world, a rectangle that lenses over the happenings of life, looking at representing it. As he considers the reality outside where things seem ticking all by
themselves more or less amicably, our friend couldn’t be clearer: writing won’t magically soften its edges, nor increase its depth; uninformed and independent from us and the rationale we choose to adopt, the equation of life runs its course disconnected from the representation we give of it. Severed and unable to draw directly from the essence of things, our rendering of the world, and before that our perception of it, can only be described as the result of a volitive process. Decisions (from Latin decidere, literally “to cut off,” from de “off” and caedere “to cut”) is all we have, trimmings—words in verses.
Review by Douglas Thornton
This poem has a sensitivity which is very much appealing; the thinking behind it is creative, sometimes undefined, but enough to keep the reader in a state of expectation. Ultimately, what we are presented with is a kind of window of opportunity that, in our imagination, becomes a means to deal with the exterior world.