Chaplet

This entry is part 87 of 92 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

Garland of flowers and beads, of prayers
and breaths, rosary of alleviation—

even the gnats dancing in deep shade
figure somehow into this calculus.

But today I am past counting.
Today I want only to inhale

what comes to musk, especially
at evening. Even the crow flicks open

its dark parasol and wings away.
The river stones lie quietly under water:

not quite weightless but small
enough to turn and bevel at the edges.

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:

June 16, 2011 at 8:45 am

The last three lines, Luisa is pure Zen. Bravo!

Albert B. Casuga says:

June 16, 2011 at 10:56 am

The river stones lie quietly under water:/not quite weightless but small/ enough to turn and bevel at the edges.

SURFACING
(An Ars Poetica)

Surfacing. We allow ourselves this one
salving act when every balm fails.

Bobbing up for air where it is rare,
we pray that this will hold long enough.

Enough for the moments at dusk when
we must dive again, submerge again,

into depths we know will one day hold us
down, and remain there to mend hurts

that in those magical spaces become
like pearls: prickly cutting dirt engulfed

into bivalved flesh that may in turn
become a magical gem from the agony.

Surfacing, we find ourselves some river
stream to rest with the rolling river stones.

Surfacing, we know we must go back
to the darkened depths, and like oysters

bear the pain cutting through our flesh
that we may surface soon with a new pearl.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-16-11

2 Replies to “Chaplet”