The Fog & The Laurel: poems by Juan Pablo Mobili

horse, image by amar42, on Pixabay, modified

Old Ways

My grandmother would tell me

how stonemasons would whistle

while they spread cement over each brick,

           as carefully as butter on hot bread,

and how collectors of chatarra loaded

their carts with scrap metal

to unfathomable heights,

           while they sang to their old horses.

I don’t sing when I wash dishes

or write poems, I remain quiet like

butter melts or cement binds a wall or

           old horses hauled a mountain

no one seems to climb anymore.

                             *

The Fog & The Laurel

If it weren’t for my misguided youth

—the thick fog I call my youth—

I would have been that horse

no one bets on that reaches

the moon first but it’s at ease

grazing on a crater. Knowing I knew

less than the fog knows about safe voyages,

everyone still expected

I’d apply for the dove’s job,

but the olive branch was heavy,

and the fog as dense as ever.

Instead, I returned with laurel in my beak,

seduced by glory, clueless about

what compelled me to come back,

naïve enough to expect that peace

would greet us at the shore, that warships

would not surround the ark.

________________________

Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires,

and adopted by New York. His poems appear

in Tupelo Quarterly, Hanging Loose Magazine, Louisville Review, and The Worcester Review, 

among others, as well as publications in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. He’s a recipient of multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations and an Honorable Mention from

the International Human Rights Art Festival.

His chapbook, 'Contraband,' was published in

2022 and, in January of 2025, he was appointed Poet Laureate of Rockland County, New York.

June 2025 issue