James Mclain Poet Rhyme

Rocco Basalisk

There is a name the dusk will keep,
A low, unuttered thing—
It stirs beneath the olive leaves
And will not rise or sing.

Rocco, they said, as if a bell
Had tolled beneath the sea,
And something cold with jeweled eyes
Turned once, and looked at me.

No wind had moved, no branch had sighed,
Yet stillness grew so deep
I felt the world draw in its breath
As though it feared to speak.

Basalisk—O shadowed word,
With fire beneath its skin,
You walk the edges of the heart
And turn all longing thin.

For beauty held too long, they say,
Will harden into stone,
And eyes that dare to love too much
May petrify their own.

So let me pass with lowered gaze
Where quiet mercies lie,
Nor meet the gleam that stills the soul
And teaches it to die.

Yet somewhere in that silent dark
A fragile sorrow wakes—
For even stone remembers once
The shape that love could take.

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