Author: Luisa A. Igloria

A lone ricebird perches
on the shoulder of the water buffalo.

Three of them, four, twenty:
flotilla of wings against the sky.

How many would it take,
before their weight felt like a burden?

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

A little warmth, and look—
the writhing earth, how it opens
like a heart to the sun.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

that the earnest-sounding clerk calling
all shoppers to gather round his station
between the produce and meat sections
at the price club, is doing his demo
of Ginsu knives by slicing through
not a steak, but the metal head of a claw
hammer? There’s a small collective gasp
when the same steel blade that severs
the claws which fall like little Toblerone
shapes on the chopping block, swiftly renders
a tomato into paper-thin circles. While this
is not exactly the state of “disruptive wonder”
which the TED lecturer was talking about in that
viral video, in which she describes how her passion
to find “the hidden talents of everyday things”
led to the paper record player-invitation she made
for friends getting married— still, the suddenly
Ginsu-happy crowd might see in the photophoric
gleam of new steel bonded to textured no-slip
polypropylene or wood handles, a few other
things they might not have paid attention to
before: the tiniest flinch in a cut of brittle
green nori wrapped around a savory mouthful
of rice; the even perfection of carrot stars
and radish wheels; the elegance of cucumber
matchsticks, pale and smooth as jade.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse.
And even then you were talking to all of us, weren’t you:
ghostly presences in a future that we now inhabit,
tumbling swiftly from one gate to another. Last week,

moments before the train departed the platform at the Jackson
Street station for O’Hare and the flight I had no idea
would be canceled three times before I could board— a woman
got on, breathless, asking passengers nearest the doors:

Chinatown? Chinatown? She had on a thin cloth coat,
and her short bob of greying hair was plastered to her forehead.
No one even blinked. Perhaps they couldn’t hear from whatever
was playing on their earphones, or maybe they were tourists

with no idea either. Before the doors swung shut I caught
her eye and shook my head; yelled Red line, red line, and she
darted off. I don’t know if she ever made it to her destination,
whatever that might have been. And in a related meditation

I read how Time is like a river made up of the events which
happen, and a violent stream: for as soon as a thing has been seen,
it is carried away, and another comes in its place… Therefore,
all that afternoon into evening, as thin snow began to fall again

on the tarmac, streaking the windows, chilling the glass,
seats filled and emptied, emptied and filled; and it is
as though the blue light flickering near the ceiling
of the concourse were that same river’s garment.

Passengers anxious about missed connections watched
as TV monitors showed footage of town after town in southern
Indiana hit by a single tornado— New Pekin, Henryville,
Marysville, Chelsea— before it crossed the Ohio River

into Kentucky. The hours stretched, and in their fluid arms
there might have been the call of the mourning dove, there
might have been a sparrow slight as the child borne aloft
before the dark column of air set her down in the field.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The dark-haired woman with the death’s head
tattoo wreathed by red roses and flames tosses
her three-year-old into the kiddy pool, and moments
later the child emerges, wildly laughing at the other
end of the lane divider. They do it again. Meanwhile,
I’ve recognized the man with the slight limp and
one palsied arm who sometimes works at the bakery
cafe, doing water exercises: walking from one side
of the pool to the other. Children are flinging
pink and yellow balls, slapping the chlorinated water
with paddles and foam noodles. All this, of course,
for no reason other than the pleasure of doing so.
Late afternoon sun pours through west-facing windows,
mellower counterpoint to the sauna-like haze
indoors. What did the bluebird mean by saving
his best song for the bluest sky? Or Marcus Aurelius,
who wrote about How quickly all things disappear,
in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time
the remembrance of them? When we walk out
of the building, there’s light enough still
to make plans for dinner, or a walk, or a movie
at the mall. Everyone has a piece of china
that’s never been used, shirts hanging in the closet
with their price tags still attached. The bluebird
should sing instead: Eat from the good white plate
tonight. Dress in your best coat, your purest cotton.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

When I was a child did you bend back my little toes
and my big toes, then wrap them in a linen bandage
for years? asks my second daughter, frustrated
that there are fewer grown up styles for size 5 feet.

*

A signature may consist of a folio or an octavo.
Sewing through the fold makes a nice journal or book—
you have to take care that the binding tape is nicely
aligned on both sides of sewing, on the spine.

*

A friend chafes at wearing his wedding band in
public; or not at all. I think I’ve only seen it once
or twice: a plain ring with a raised rim in yellow
gold. He and his wife have arguments about that.

*

The gossip of goldfinches makes a single bright thread
in the day. For a change, how nice it is to have warmth
without shadows, quiet talk, no rancor, no regret. I like
that the mull is mesh material glued to the signature set.

*

Here is the bone that burnishes smooth, that lays the papers down
with their marbled leaves. Did you know the word volume comes from
volvere, which is related to scroll, thin sheet of parchment wound
like a blind about its staff? As desire returns to its beginnings.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.