Author: Edilson Afonso Ferreira

Dear Few Friends

/ Edilson Afonso Ferreira / Leave a comment

I have never seen myself,

and I am sure no one never will see,

as a friend of people used to easy laughs

and to those affected pats on the back.

I prefer austere, even stern people,

like the land I was born and grew up in.

Land of shrubs, narrow creeks and bare hills,

very brief a spring and summer, dry autumn

and then so endless and sleepy a winter.

Land unknown to purple-brown grapes,

bright persimmons and fat peaches,

where do not flow the milk and honey, just

some honest meagre sheaves by the harvest.

The song I sing is only heard by my equals,

some few ones,

who are not accustomed to false praise

and empty words,

but prompt effective and friendly deeds.

 

Published in The Provo Canyon Review, Fall 2016 issue.

http://www.provocanyonreview.net

Published in Indiana Voice Journal, May 2017 issue

http://www.indianavoicejournal.com

 

 

 

 

Nocturnal Strength

/ Edilson Afonso Ferreira / Leave a comment

Tonight, silent at the window of my hill’s cabin,

I see sparkling lights on the dark horizon,

evidence of the human presence.

Suddenly, I realize that, unlike sunny lights,

powerful and made by hidden an Almighty,

these ones are made and sent by companions,

fallible human comrades like anyone of us.

Really fallible, but full capable of, on solitary

and wild night, just as if by magic,

warm and encourage so poor a fellow’s soul.

Memorabilia

/ Edilson Afonso Ferreira / Leave a comment

Suddenly a grain of sand invades an oyster,

peacefully lying in the depths of the ocean,

unhappy a road accident.

Then, to protect itself from irritation,

the oyster quickly covers the uninvited visitor with layers

and layers of nacre, a mineral from which is fashioned

its internal shell.

The grain of sand gains a fine coat, which produces

iridescent and stunning a pearl.

Some accidents like this permeate our lives

on unexpected days and by unforeseen intruders.

Perhaps, similarly, we have made our pearls:

–memorable statues, symphonies and sonnets–

First published in Indiana Voice Journal, August 2016 issue.

http://www.indianavoicejournal.com

Published in Algebra of Owls, September 11, 2016.

http://www.algebraofowls.com

Published in Free Lit Magazine, March 2018, The Power Issue.

http://www.freelitmagazine.com

Published in Rudderless Mariner Poetry, on May 20th, 2022

http://www.rudderlessmarinerpoetry.com

Published in West Ward Quarterly, Spring 2025 printed issue

http://www.wwquarterly.com

Memorabilia by Edilson Afonso Ferreira

Published in Feed the Holy, March 26, 2026

On Speaking Of Gravitation

/ Edilson Afonso Ferreira / Leave a comment

       “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”

       Poem by Emily Dickinson

I’m not nobody, like Dickinson was.

I know that I have a name, by which

many friends call me, having also

ready a road I’m always wandering by.

So few friends had called on her and

she didn’t need roads to gain the world,

nor knew Amherst was naught,

gravitating around all of her.

Published in Off The Coast, Printed Summer 2016 issue.

http://www.off-the-coast.com

Published in The Lake, July 2021

http://www.thelakepoetry.co.uk

Old Summers

/ Edilson Afonso Ferreira / Leave a comment

By the very first days of summers of my youth,

I always heard, every year, the song of a bird.

Never had I seen it, solely hearing its sound.

It was a pheasant cuckoo hammering two whistles,

that all of us, by no error, so listened:

summer comes!  summer comes!  

Like a live version of the clock’s cuckoo, it warned,

to the most unwary ones,

that had begun the most desired and expected season.

Its chant is lost and our days will never be the same

without that hammering dear beat.

 

Published in Indiana Voice Journal, August 2016 issue.

http://www.indianavoicejournal.com

Published in Highland Park Poetry, Summer 2017 issue.

http://www.highlandparkpoetry.org.

Published in West Ward Quarterly, Summer 2017 printed issue.

http://www.wwquarterly.com

 

 

Pilgrims from the East

/ Edilson Afonso Ferreira / Leave a comment

Sometime, somewhere in the East Lands,

there was a spot relieved by four rivers,

right place to settle shadowed a garden.

A traveling Potentate loved the scenery,

took possession of it, there building

magnificent a manor house.

Having not a hermit’s heart and His will

for creation unsatisfied,

and applying unsuspected powers,

He created, to Him and His peers’ likeness,

the beginning of a new nation, which he named

the humans.

Love and the desire to create, the bequest

we were awarded from our Lord

has lead us to populate and stretch out

the once Garden of Eden.

 

Published in Red Wolf Journal, June 06, 2016.

http://www.redwolfjournal.wordpress.com

A Brave New man

/ Edilson Afonso Ferreira / Leave a comment

From immemorial times I feel a dust

always hunting me wherever I go.

It blows softly and lightly, furtively

involving and deluding me.

It is a peculiar dust, that has in mind

not my body but my soul.

Created by the power of my enemies

and my disillusions, it works to calcify

the framework of my entire being.

But by night, at home and asleep,

you have all the right not to believe me,

invisible angels pour a cleansing rain

and by dawn it is a new and fresh man

who faces so old-fashioned one world.

First published in the July 2016 issue of The Basil O’Flaherty.

http://www.thebasiloflaherty.weebly.com

Published in Spirit Fire Review, August 27 2016.

http://www.spiritfirereview.com

A Poet’s Life

/ Edilson Afonso Ferreira / Leave a comment

Poets are made by mode of enchantment,

and mine has been an exquisite one.

It comes from our common ground,

sometimes from dark underground,

even from sparkling highs of heaven.

Some days, somewhere, untied to myself,

world loses the poet and gains the autist,

till a good soul recognizes me,

reconnecting the mode,

like an out of order gadget.

 

Published in Red Wolf Journal, May 21, 2016.

http://www.redwolfjournal.wordpress.com

Ancestral Blessing

/ Edilson Afonso Ferreira / Leave a comment

We live in a consecrated land, former battlefield,

again, and again sanctified by fallen warriors,

that have given their best for us.

They have baptized this earth with blood, sweat

and tears, which seasoned the ground, making

double and sweet the fruits by the harvest time.

Published in the April National Poetry Project 2024 on Instagram by Writer Shed Press and on the Chapbook of this Project.

Three Roads

/ Edilson Afonso Ferreira / Leave a comment

On “Wheat Field with Crows”, the last painting by Van Gogh.

 

The fullness of a golden wheat field is crowned

by a flock of dark birds in its migratory flying away.

The health and vigor of the landscape contrasts

with the menace of a cloudy and stormy sky,

which does not prevent the birds’ journey.

They know from birth the right route

and are the owners of the sky.

Poor humans do not fly, and are always doubting

their choice of the three roads Gogh has painted.

We are the owners of the earth and its richness,

but we have not even a little of the crows’ sense.

Published in Young Ravens Literary Review, Issue 4, May 31, 2016.

http://www.youngravensliteraryreview.org/issue-4.html

Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows, 1890. 50.2 cm × 103 cm (19.9 in × 40.6 in). Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.