Shh. Say nothing of the racket of jays
in the crown of an oak, commotion
of feathers every which way—
I don’t know either how to find
the way back to the garden; only
now there is everything to say.
Moths lie still on the mesh
of the window, light
being the project
never quite done.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Aperture
- Familiar
- Landscape, with Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
- Prognosis
- Listings
- Grenadilla
- Aubade
- El Sagrado Corazon
- Consolation
- Three (More) Improvisations
- Reconnaissance
- The Gift
- Goldfinch in the Garden
- Talon
- What Cannot Eat
- Happiness
- Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser
- Defense
- Petition to Fullness
- Heart you Want to Lead in from the Cold
- Unending Lyric
- Trace
- Prospecting
- Dear modest four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath
- Shit
- Ode to the Pedicure Place at the Mall
- Defiler
- Letter to Attention
- Real
- Discordant
- Dowsing
- Landscape, with Incipient Questions
- Letter to Stone
- Orison
- Milagrito: Eye of the Raven
- Epithalamium
- What You Don’t Always See
- Lost Lyric
- Going to the Acupuncturist in the Market
- Migrant Letters
- The Road of Imperfect Attentions
- In the Country of Lost Hours
- Morning Lesson
- Reprieve
- Song of the Seamstress’s Daughter
- Landscape, with Construction Worker, Ants, and Gull
- End Times
- Dream Landscape, with Ray-bans and Leyte Landing
- Pantoum, with Spiderweb and Raindrops
- Assassin’s Wake
- Shroud Villanelle
- Dear Annie Oakley,
- Landscape, with Red Omens
- Late Summer Landscape, with Twilight and Daughters
- Ghazal of Unattainable Silence
- Try
- Occasional
- Distance, Then
- Turning
- Noon Prayer
- Acompañamiento
- In the Convent of Perpetual Adoration
- State of Emergency
- Storm Warning
- Charms
- Goodbye, Irene
- The Lovers
- Currents
- Dream of the Four Directions
- Chainus
- Dear recklessness, dear jeweled
- Gleaning
- Bearing Fire
- The Summer of the Angel of Death
- Veneer
Nice, Luisa, but I came by to see Luisa’s Birthday Poem. Where is it? Shall come back and look later.
Meanwhile, happy nice round birthday to you! Here is an e-present, the poem I wrote on my last birthday. With music and images by Paul Digby.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEfrItrLfPA
BACK IN THE GARDEN
(For Luisa, at 50)
In our peculiar roundabout ways,
we have tried to retrace our way
back to the garden, using words
as lanterns to light obscured paths
we hope to find again, know again,
walk through again till we get there.
Like the still moths on the window,
we gather toward flames where
they glow warmest, to keep us alive
when falling off into dark nights
of hurt and doubt, of wordlessness,
finding ourselves betrayed. Muted.
Light being the project never quite
done, have we not arrogated a task
of flitting about like fireflies, carting
fire to recondite places where lost
flower eaters long still for burning
bushes billowing with quiet words?
—Albert B. Casuga
09-03-11
Also posted in http://albertbcasuga.blogspot.com/2011/09/back-to-garden.html and Facebook.