Vocalise

This entry is part 42 of 92 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

We found the feathered body
beneath the window, red claws
stiffened into lower case C’s.

Whose voice is that then,
launching its frisson of a rising trill
across the field?

So little time: I clasp
the little tremor in my throat,
your hand under the table.

We pass the cup’s
clear lake of green
tea between us.

The French lilac answers,
its bright shimmer
backlit by the sun.

About

Via Negativa is a unique experiment in daily, poetic conversation with the living and the dead. Dave Bonta founded the site in 2003 and Luisa A. Igloria joined in 2010. Guest authors contribute as well. Dave writes daily erasure poems to discover the poetry hidden in the Diary of Samuel Pepys. Luisa has been writing and posting a poem a day since November 2010, often in response to Dave’s entries at The Morning Porch. Collections of poems first published at Via Negativa include Luisa’s The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis and Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser, and Dave’s Ice Mountain and Breakdown: Banjo Poems. Read more…

Albert B. Casuga says:

April 30, 2011 at 3:02 pm

AN EMPTY TABLE

The call for the final act jolts us
like the frisson of a rising trill
from an ephemera, perhaps a dream,
that you have, indeed, returned.
But the passing of clear, lake green
tea between us is an intermission
that is just that—a passing moment.
So little time. Like a quick tremor
on my throat. And your fingers must
yet again release my unwilling hands
from its fevered clasp, its grip under
this empty table. O, how fast thought
careens into a dying dream.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-30-11

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