by Tag Cavello
cantata she went away,
Left love I no more understand,
The love as a gift I never could hand,
'Cross desk, the desk, the chiseled brown desk.
I did nothing but watch that day.
***
Sing forth from your garden of gray,
Oh seamstress sing if you will,
A carol or dirge that speaks of some purge.
I did nothing but watch that day,
On the wind, 'cross the desk, with a gift.
***
We once heard an April cantata,
That kept all our sadness at bay.
We once heard an April cantata,
And in it she went away.
Afterword
Whoa boy!
Where to start with this one? The beginning, I guess—except I can’t remember the beginning. It happened sometime during the early 90s, not long after I started doing short stories (short stories that bombed, one after the next, with the poor publishers of countless small literary magazines—but hey publishers, I’m still around, while your magazines are not). Robert Frost was the first poet whose work I really loved. From him I jumped to people like Elizabeth Barret Browning and A.E. Housman and W.H. Auden. Frost, however, remained my constant. I wanted to write poetry like him, and if I couldn’t do that, I didn’t want to write poetry at all.
Well, as you’ve already guessed, I’m not Robert Frost. Not even close. If wishes were horses and all that. My poems of the 90s were terrible. The ones you read here…a little better. A little. I wanted more though. I still do. My work rarely satisfies me completely. All the time, I go back and tweak things. These poems were all tweaked before making it to Secluded Worlds. You can find more raw versions on Wattpad, if you like, but I hope what came here is better.
Most were written in bed. I snuggled under the covers with a notebook and an idea, wrote a line, snuggled again, wrote another line, and so on and so forth. Poetry, for me, is like that. You’re in bed with a pretty girl, giving her all the love you have. And believe me, those kisses better be deep. And those sweet promises you whisper? Better mean every single word.
I certainly meant everything in this collection. A lot of it is about the things I miss: snow, solitude, my dog. And yes, a girl I once knew.
Thank you for reading. Please leave a review if you have time. You have no idea what feedback—even negative feedback (so long as it’s constructive)—does for an author. Too often us Indie folk feel ignored. Don’t let E.L. James be the only one of us who makes it big, because dear Lord, is she terrible (so much for constructive feedback).
All right. Enough of my rambling. Stay real, stay cool, and stay loose.
--Tag Cavello, May, 2017
Tag Cavello was born in Norwalk, Ohio, in 1971. Today he lives in Manila, Philippines, with his wife and two young daughters.
Other Works by Tag Cavello:
Double Dutch and Other Stories
Regions of Passion
Crystal Grader
Splattered
The Breakfast Tart Princess
Blog: Oldstonecorridor.wordpress.com
Twitter: notc1971
Instagram: tagcavello
Deviantart: TagCavello
Cover: The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917)