KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
Thomas Praino
Reflections From a White Linen Isle
An old melody, ancient as the Euphrates
fans an ember's glow, a memory.
Long ago that melody refrained onto this isle shore.
Minor cords arpeggiated while we sat holding hands.
That night, the elfin votive candle
sprinkled vanilla into the penumbras of my mind.
Heightened thoughts waltzed in flaxen fires
like Dante’s eternal lovers, two flames intertwined.
Just a stock, stemmed rose in a long,
thin vase veiled upright desire.
We, paired wine glasses in a prelude
to a prolonged Song of Songs.
You felt all silver could not glisten
like the diamond that would dress
your naked finger. Me,
all the diamonds in dark Africa
were a coarse grain photo
of your smile. Two adamant atoms
in one forever setting, halves,
even apart, rising whole.
Sublime, how quick the present rimes
across the orchard of the past. Tonight,
the amber votive beacons like
an ice distant star. My claret
half-full, and I, a long stemmed
rose in a fine, glass vase.
The Ocean on a Moonless Night
On this moonless night,
a mydriatic black
pupil gazes at me
like a tiger might.
Below these volcanic
rocks, earth’s matriarch
stirs in fathoms
of dreams. She tosses,
chaos,
sighs a lullaby,
quells.
Multitudinous surges
rush
breast onto breast
crashing the coast
in thunderous lust.
Brine mist sprays cold
off the crest below.
In an insatiable jet,
white explodes,
Circe's moans.
Out of the raven roll
of cannoned waves,
a murmur resounds
from the deep.
After the fire
ungirded me, life,
my errant fantasy.
Thomas D. Praino is a doctor by vocation and a veterinarian by profession. His short drama, a fifteen minute play, “Memorandum For Theater: Northern Italy, 25 July 1944,” was published in War Literature and the Arts, 2012. His short story, “Carmen’s Blood Song, (A Siguiriya)” inspired by the poem El Paso de la Siguiriya, by Federico Garcia Lorca, and his fairy tale, “An Ancient Fairy Tale of Ista and Her Brother Asar,” based on the Neapolitan fairy tale of Giambattista Basile, but set in the Middle East, are both self-published on Amazon Kindle.