Intense cold, and a stillness so deep the trains can barely be heard. A cardinal flickers like a pilot light under the bridal wreath bush.
The view from my front porch every morning, in 140 or fewer characters
Intense cold, and a stillness so deep...
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Landscape, with Cardinal and Earring
The man walking his dog notices that under the bridal
wreath bush, a cardinal flickers like a pilot light.
The woman at her window sees the moon not yet
completely faded in the sky, half a pearl earring
she still keeps in her drawer though the other
has long gone missing. What parts do we need
to complete each other? Sometimes the day
wobbles like a cart with one wheel.
Sometimes it arrows like a train through
the countryside, even though we don’t see it.
We hear its rush onward, its insistent
push toward the distance. The cold
is intense today, and hard to withstand
alone, out in the open. The man gestures
to his dog and retraces his steps.
The woman turns away from the window.
In the bushes, a tiny red brushstroke
wavering in the cross-hatched branches.
- Luisa A. Igloria
01 22 2011
sent from my Blackberry
Dave, use this. Slight correction. Thanks, Luisa
***
Landscape, with Cardinal and Earring
The man walking his dog notices that under the bridal
wreath bush, a cardinal flickers like a pilot light.
The woman at her window sees the moon not yet
completely faded in the sky, half a pair of pearl earrings
she still keeps in her drawer though the other
has long gone missing. What parts do we need
to complete each other? Sometimes the day
wobbles like a cart with one wheel.
Sometimes it arrows like a train through
the countryside, even though we don’t see it.
We hear its rush onward, its insistent
push toward the distance. The cold
is intense today, and hard to withstand
alone, out in the open. The man gestures
to his dog and retraces his steps.
The woman turns away from the window.
In the bushes, a tiny red brushstroke
wavering in the cross-hatched branches.
- Luisa A. Igloria
01 22 2011
sent from my Blackberry
[...] response to today’s Morning Porch entry. Series Navigation«Ghazal of the Dark Water Filed in Guest writers, Poems & poem-like [...]
THE PILOT LIGHT
Trains do not run at Poro Point, China Sea’s south sentinel,
But I always recall midnight trainrides going back home:
They would crane their necks out for a distant light, however
Late it took for this rickety, dank, dingy, and dark charger
To arrive at its last station in San Fernando. He is home.
Unico hijo, niño bonito, Salvador del nombre muerto.
When I saw her last, she asked: Did you take that long ride
On the midnight train? You should have waited for us
To meet you at the station. You should have called.
Where is your father? Did anyone meet you there at all?
The train does not come here anymore, was a kind answer
I thought I would have said, but I kept as quiet as his sepia
Portrait on the wall. I tore away to a space of intense cold
And stillness, so deep the trains cannot be heard.
That was the lad of lost years grown beyond these tears,
The kiss on her hands were those of a shrivelled man
Gone back to retrieve promises that remain unkept:
I will be back on all those midnight trains. I will be back.
Here, on my hammock hour, on a cold cabin porch,
I catch a cardinal flicker like a pilot light under the bridal
Wreath bush and espy the blurred distant light of a cargo
Train pushing through the looming blizzard.
— ALBERT B. CASUGA
Mississauga, 1-22-11
Really bluesy! I like it.
Was remembering the old folks back in the old country, Dave. Remembrances now seem to flicker like pilot lights in the furnace, but hope they will go on forever. But…
Thank you. And see you at the porch.
I shared this one across the breakfast table with my fiance and she liked it a lot, — the pilot light.
Thank you and your fiance, Evan. Dave Bonta’s lines kick the poetry out of this old skull; and, voila, better ones than the gushing verse of younger years.
Speaking of “a stillness so deep…” — I am reminded of what Bernadette Roberts said: “There is a silence within; a silence that descends from without; a silence that stills existence; and a silence that engulfs the entire universe. There is a silence of the self and its faculties of will, thought, memory, and emotions. There is a silence in which there is nothing, a silence in which there is something; and finally, there is the silence of no-self and the silence of God.”
–from THE EXPERIENCE OF NO-SELF, Ch. 1.
[...] “The state of the state of Arizona,” by Luis H. Francia. The epigraph comes from a comment at The Morning Porch by Bob [...]