In front of a cloud
of blossoming mountain laurel,
a deer: the flash of her tan coat
passing quicker than a kiss farewell—
Always, you travel ahead. And yet
you’ve cast your shadow everywhere:
even here in the river shallows,
refracted in the volatile colors of fish
swimming from the brutal heat of day.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Always a Story
- Landscape with Sudden Rain, Wet Blooms, and a Van Eyck Painting
- Letter to Implacable Things
- Landscape, with Cave and Lovers
- Miniatures
- Letter to Self, Somewhere Other than Here
- Ghazal with a Few Variations
- Letter to Silence
- Landscape, with Returning Things
- Postcard to Grey
- Not Yet There
- Letter to the Street Where I Grew Up (City Camp Alley, Baguio City)
- Between
- Parable of Sound
- Letter to Providence
- Glint
- The Beloved Asks
- Letter to Longing
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Twenty Questions
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Interlude
- Villanelle of the Red Maple
- Letter to Leaving or Staying
- Salutation
- Letter to Love
- Letter to Fortune
- Territories
- Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe
- Dear season of hesitant but clearing light,
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Singing Bowl
- [temporarily removed by author]
- Risen
- Refrain
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Dear heart, I take up my tasks again:
- Mirage
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Risk
- Vocalise
- Tremolo
- Interior Landscape, with Roman Shades and Lovers
- Bird Looking One Way, Then Another
- Gypsy Heart
- Like the Warbler
- Landscape with Carillon
- Letter to Ardor
- Landscape, with Salt and Rain at Dawn
- Marks
- Landscape, with Sunlight and Bits of Clay
- Slaying the Beast
- Measures
- In a Hotel Lobby, near Midnight
- Landscape with Shades of Red
- Between the Acts
- Letter to Duty
- Letter to Nostalgia
- You
- Song of Work
- Balm
- Landscape, with Wind and Tulip Tree
- From the Leaves of the Night Notebook
- Letter to What Must be Borne
- Redolence
- Letter to Myself, Reading a Letter
- Night-leaf Tarot
- Trauermantel
- Foretelling
- Aubade, with Sparrow
- Reverie
- Mineral Song
- Layers
- Prayer
- Proof
A WILL-O’-THE-WISP
They are not there. Wherever you find them,
they will not stay. Let them go, but keep
their mark. Quicker than a farewell kiss,
they run ahead of you and hope to throw
you another one from the shadowy depths
of yearning, of longing, of needing really.
With sunrise, does not the claw-like
shadow of the primrose stigma recede?
It is the yellow blossom turns the path
into a sparkling trail that will not be there
when darkness shrouds the valley. Touch
and go. They will not be there, these
songs you scarcely hear from this distance.
And your vesper question? What lessons on
grasping and letting go do these things
teach you? You cannot hold them down.
But they will haunt you until you learn
how to summon them when you need
memories to touch your face caressingly.
—Albert B. Casuga
06-09-11