11 Comments


  1. 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


  2. 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



  4. 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


      1. 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.


  5. I shared this one across the breakfast table with my fiance and she liked it a lot, — the pilot light.


    1. 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.


  6. 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.



  8. icy cold, a haiku sequence

    icy cold
    so deep the trains far off
    the sound of water

    under the bridal wreath bush
    our webbed patterns in ice

    intense cold
    the flicker of a cardinal
    a pilot light

    and there…swatches of tulle
    over the sun

    next I look
    the staccato scratching
    of his rake

    halfway in the train ride
    a chain splits apart

    intense cold
    his distance smothers
    a pebble bed

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