Plastic bag in tree.

Bag in the Breeze

Thursday morning, 9:47 a.m.
White airy clouds
painted against a pale blue sky.
Whipping sounds like
baseball cards spinning in bicycle spokes
call out to pedestrians
moving on the salt-crusted sidewalk.
A medical helicopter zips overhead.
You look up as it flies out of sight.
And with your head still raised,
you spot a plastic shopping bag
tangled on a leafless branch,
stuck at the top of a tree,
flapping in the breeze.
The bag waves its white flag
in an overture of surrender,
hinting at submission to the grip of winter,
while struggling to break loose,
straining to be released,
and waiting for a new wind to set it free.

©2017 Francis DiClemente
(Sidewalk Stories, Kelsay Books)

Winter sunrise. Photo by Francis DiClemente.

On Leaving Syracuse

The grass may not
be greener elsewhere,
but at least
it won’t be
covered with snow.

My son, Colin, stomping in the snow while waiting for the bus. Photo by Francis DiClemente.

This poem is pure fiction, but it arose out of a parent’s fear of losing a child.

Sitting by the Fire in Winter

I sit with my grief.
I wrap it around myself
like an overcoat,
while staring at the
embers of the fire,
holding my dead son’s
ski jacket close to my nose,
and remembering his
cold, little hands,
wet socks,
and the smell of his
sweaty head in winter.