1/16/2011

8

Bands of blue move east and close just before the sun can enter them. Once, when the wind dies, it’s completely quiet for fifteen seconds.

8 Comments


  1. A PURLOINED SUNRISE

    The sky mimics a stage from this backrow seat,
    All actors cued, primed for curtain call,
    For some, their fleeting moment of fame, but
    Encores are scarce before the curtain fall.

    From this hammock, no struts or bellows
    Supplant the sweep of silence cutting through
    A valley rising from nights like strange bedfellows
    Askance: What did sleep bring beside this snow?

    A vast theatre, bands of blue move east before
    The sun can enter them—denying a bravura
    Of sunrise, and close just before the hapless actor,
    Ripping through falling curtains, cries: Encore!

    In the stirring valley, at the prompt of sunrise,
    It is completely quiet. Then the wind dies.

    —ALBERT B. CASUGA
    Mississauga, 01-16-11


  2. Rosary

    “Everything changes, nothing remains without change.” ~ Gautama Buddha

    All day I moved from task to task– washing and dressing, raising the shades, putting away clean dishes and utensils from last night as we waited for our youngest daughter to eat her bread and cheese and jam. We piled into the car and drove to church; there too it took some work to listen and tune in to the service, to homilies of being lost and found, the shuffle of collection baskets making their rounds. The wheel of standing-sitting-kneeling, attended by hymns and prayer. After church, we stopped for coffee and sandwiches, the Sunday paper; then went to the Asian grocery for rice (we like the “Milagrosa” brand), sweet bread and tea, mustard greens, and bitter melon. I bought three tiny good luck charms for the lunar new year: fingerling gourd with a buddha hidden in its hem, small brass urn, three-tiered pagoda. At noon, the streets were still surprisingly empty, not even harboring their usual noise. When the wind moved, bands of blue moved east and closed just before the sun could enter them. Everything grew still. When the wind died, it was completely quiet for fifteen seconds. I thought I saw a thousand-armed goddess step through the clouds; just one slight gesture of her hand multiplied in the air and prismed. A truck rumbled past. A siren blared. All around, colors fractured and glowed like pieces of stained glass.

    ~ Luisa A. Igloria
    01 16 2011


  3. Dave, one tiny correction to my opening line, if you would be so kind:

    “All day I moved from task to task– …”

    Thanks,
    Luisa



  5. Hi, Dave:
    In the 12th line, the line should read:
    “Ripping through falling curtains, cries: Encore!”

    Could you kindly put in the correction: “Ripping”?

    I am certainly “reaping” the boners of haste and eager posting!

    (By the way, if “Encore!” is pronounced as the French would, it will rhyme with “bravura”. (One will hear it as “Angka”.) Thanks, Dave. See you at the porch. [Also posted it in my litblog.]


    1. Corrected.

      I actually prefer slant rhymes to perfect rhymes.


  6. Your noted whitespace; absence of sound as a presence!


    1. It can sure seem so.

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