Poems

Feu D'Artifice

By Peter Halstead

What catalogue of arts perverse
Stages fireworks in reverse,
Pushing snowballs out of trees,
An icy Roman Candle frieze,
Sunlight shining through the crystals
Of the snowflakes' raining pistils,
Exploding stars of colored mist
Shaken by the solar wrist,
The way a meteor in death gives birth,
Bringing heaven down to earth,
Our more pedestrian displays
Mocking this haphazard blaze
Which, unlike a manmade rocket's gyre,
Isn't artifice, but fire.

Tippet Alley
Monday, December 9th, 1996, 11:16–11:44 AM
January 4th and March 20th, 1997

Mougins
September 28th, 2005