JOHN MURO - POEMS

A resident of Connecticut, John is a graduate of Trinity College, Wesleyan University and the University of Connecticut. His first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published in the fall of 2020 by Antrim House, and it is available on Amazon. John’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous literary journals, including BlueHouse, Euphony, Moria, Penumbra, Sheepshead, Sky Island and the French Literary Review. He is also a two-time nominee for the 2021 Pushcart Prize.

​The Peabody Museum (1965)

New Haven, CT

​Finally come to that congested case
and the counterfeit specimens
pinned to air –
Wood Thrush and Meadow
Lark, the Scarlet and Blue-
Gray Tanager; pressed to view
the hummingbirds encased
in gilded throats of flowers,
then ushered to another exposition:
fossils from the Cambrian
 
Era. Poorly feigned
interest and worked clear
to songbirds in glass,
silently withdrew
to a habitat of shadow
and flitted to a space where
all was tree-born hues
and wood notes hushed by glass;
there I came to know
how to listen and hear again.
 
Failed to fathom, though,
how feathers stirred in stagnant air;
or why nests of Blue-
Winged Warblers were placed
so close to ground; the House Wren
awkwardly perched upon a shoe;
the unsettling eye of the Vireo;
the pale green eggs of the Siskin
and the oval, flat-flared
face of a Snowy
 
Owl. Noted, too,
the raptors and how they
pilfered sky
and sought to blend
with sun into air;
dissolving in kestrel-blue;
Kingfishers studying how light
bends and travels past
 
water. The soft architecture
of air and shadow.
 
Through time held dear
the buntings and orioles;
then a patch of sky and coal
that burned through glass
to eyes that never knew
trees harbored orange-gold
or drowsy blue; still wait to hear
their small, painted throats
displace the sad conjecture
of grackles and crows.
 

​Travelogues at The Bushnell Memorial

​- Hartford, CT

​Ample hours each Sunday spent within
the nap-time air of the mezzanine where
proper ladies in pastels and pearls would come
and be afforded single seats by flashlight – no
doting companion to read aloud beside their
dying ear or idle layabout to relish the snag
of sound and crisp shush of stockings rubbing
thighs. Dearest acquaintances politely join in
the muffled applause of linen gloves as the
matinee began with a deeper-than-winter
turning down of lights – transporting them
towards long-intended destinations of blue-
green archipelagos, parks or fjords or, perhaps,
a cosmopolitan capitol filled with courtyards
of indulgent light -- always the warm, forgiving
faces of people awaiting their arrival when
lavish curtains slumped and lights lifted and
they, too, would rise, heel for balance and
bob their way towards the loge and outer
lobby to configure this week’s calendar for
collations and cards; others long ago drifted off
to sleep beneath the dim constellations dancing over-
head, elegantly weathering to a dusty gold and gray.