Desert Dweller

Frigid eerily calm air makes nostrils flare. 
Morning frost lightly dusts brown grasses
like sugar on breakfast donuts.

Yellow-green finches bathe playfully
at cracks in ice.

Steaming fragrant coffee
warms icy fingers.

© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 334/365.

I dread the silent darkness,
the formless unknown, more
than the terrors of my imagination.

Under the stars, sitting on green grass
and autumn leaves, I shrink from the abyss
opened on all sides and into the future.

Peering,
my mind sees nothing solid,
nothing to be grasped as certain,
except uncertainty itself.

Only theory-thickened obscurity.

Science feels like a mist of numbers,
equations on a dusty blackboard,
philosophy, a fog
of highlights and margin notes.

This rocky grain and its wonders
falter—an apparition in a fun-house mirror.

My self—surely a central fact—
seems insubstantial,
a phantom, a ghost so deceptive
I doubt my very existence.

My mind judges
even my full and generous love
as blind and self-centered.

Sitting on this rocky grain,
peering past Earth’s shoulder toward
unseen hills, distant plains, woods, and deserts.

Stars flicker in darkness,
a breath of crisp night air,
and I am at peace.

© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 333/365.

Peeking over the hill, the sun sees
silver threads adorned by dewdrops—
reality blossoming fiber by fiber.

Energy woven into matter:
strands of brown soil, green chlorophyll,
red death and golden life
spun into elaborate tapestries.

Living beings from lifeless sand,
trees from rock—
flatworms and amoebas
churning pond water. 

Proteins and lipids
carefully stitched into muscle
fed by carbohydrates
powered by mighty mitochondria.

A fragile body guided
by brain and hormones,
armored with claws and sharp teeth,
residing in a shelter of skin.

Inanimate forms,
infused with breath and—
a spark of awareness.

Self-consciousness
motivated by desire:
denying death
while longing for continuity.

Intricate beauty of Arachne’s web
shadowed by hunger
to understand the mystery of life.

© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 332/365.

In the small hours of night,
when even the crickets go silent,
beneath the silence
the metronome inside keeps time.

Is it my blood
that won’t stop pulsing in the dark—
the planet turning in its sleep—
or the cosmos keeping watch?

© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 331/365.

The river flows slowly
through the desert
past the leaning sycamore.

Is what I have done my life?

Is it
my mistakes
and small successes?

Is it what others say about me,
admirers and critics 
old friends and strangers?

Is it the spark that ignites,
the flame’s warmth,
or the candle’s reassurance?

Is it ink on the paper,
scribbled journals,
or notes on napkins?

Or is my life
a drop
in the river?

© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 330/365.

Walking alone on a windswept beach,
waves crashing, seabirds singing.

A single set of footprints—
I retrace steps
we once walked together,
your name fading with the breeze.

Broken shells, driftwood,
gifts of love,
undertow hidden
beneath calm water.

Love is doing what is best for you,
whatever the cost—

When you said “leave,”
I obeyed, eyes stinging 
from salt spray and tears.

Pain is a lesson best taught
by one who loves you the most.

Turning my back on the breakers, 
I don’t look back,
waves crashing,
seabirds singing.

© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 329/365.

Be careful what fears you pollinate.

How much dough gets spent on
haunted-house tours—
fifteen dollars a head?

Some step into the day
with pockets full of darkness,
still shaking
as they clock in.

Do haunted people
outnumber haunted houses?

One hand clapping
won’t feed a family
like two hands working.

© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 328/365.

In my experience, 
the more I pay attention
to the current
instead of the words,
the better I understand.

© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 327/365.
Image from the internet.

Sometimes I wonder if Bradbury, 
Bukowski, and Abbey were friends—
after all, their surnames are
shoulder-to-shoulder on the shelf,
elbowing each other within the alphabet.
Ginsberg, Hemingway, and Ibsen too.

Neruda and Rilke are parted by an ocean,
and Zappa and Patterson are alphabetically distant.

But there are doubled letters in their names,
like a backbeat pounding in my brain, 
so now there’s a new club forming,
one that includes Miller and Burroughs,
Williams, Berry, Shelley, and Hesse.

Hmm—
seems like quite a few end in ‘y’—
can’t stop seeing it now.

Maybe there’s a secret fraternity
of authors who use initials:
E.E., W.H., G.K., H.D.,
and the triple threat—
W.E.B.

What about a Society of Long Names—
Ferlinghetti and Solzhenitsyn— 
with a subcommittee of short ones:
like Corso, Lee, Twain.

And of course, an association
with a high percentage of vowels:
Asimov, Bono, DiPrima,
Kerouac,
Leary for sure present for the roll call—
so
the beat goes on…

© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 326/365.

This is not coincidence,
this incident of words before your eyes.
Words find us, whispering truths
when our spirit is ripe for whispers.

Entities we encounter,
each, a destined traveler crossing our path.
Those we meet, mirrors, reflecting
lessons we’re meant to absorb.

What unfolds is the only scene
that could grace the stage of now.
Each moment, meticulously designed,
challenges the rebellion of mind and ego.

Sister time knows her cue,
arriving precisely when universally decreed.
When our essence thirsts for change,
the universe conspires, and so it begins.

This episode before you is no coincidence,
these words before your eyes.
Endings,
not mere conclusions, but doorways,
passages to new realms,
inviting us seasoned travelers.

When the curtain falls,
it falls with purpose, with grace.
So in the end,
this is another beginning,
veiled in the mystique of an ending.

© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 325/365.
An older poem rewritten. Inspired by Jim Morrison
Image borrowed from the internet.