Dear heart, dear absent one, yes I’m still talking to you: more threadbare than the shroud that veils the moon— not quite full, mottled blue and silver— nevertheless my halting speeches aspire to permanence and shape. I’ve seen the Three Immortals, pilgrims too, with their dusty paper scrolls and staffs and red-ripe peaches plump as children’s cheeks. Is it unseemly to want more, to be as one skein of silk looped richly in the arms of defoliated trees, more than mere sigh in the shadow of departed wings? How long since I lay in the arms of untrammeled time, slow as love and thick as honey; how long since I first troubled the fret of tangled knots, looking for your hidden face? Each night the curtain lowers its velvet drape. Still unspent: my good-luck coin, glimmering fitfully beneath.
—Luisa A. Igloria
11 09 2011
In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.