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  1. Intercession

    “Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,
    Quae sub his figuris vere latitas…
    [I adore you devoutly, O hidden God
    truly present under these veils…]”
    – St. Thomas Aquinas

    The silence of falling snow perhaps is like the hush
    that lives somewhere in each moment of great
    preparation: as for instance in Pieter van der Borcht’s
    medieval copperplate engraving, when you would not know,
    unless you read the captions, that the fierce and terrible
    mangled faces of the lion and the lioness are from
    their desperate expenditure of chi so that their stillborn
    cub might live– under the gnarled cypress and rock,
    see how its body writhes, stretching and coming to at last
    under the double blowtorch of breath. And what of the meal
    that the pelican gathers for her young from the cabinet
    of her own breast, bright speckled clusters of blood from
    the vine? Feathers fragranced with cedar, the phoenix
    bursts into flame then crests from its ashes on the third
    day; the unicorn comes to lay its head on the virgin’s lap,
    and the garden’s foliage glistens like a page of illuminated
    text. Orpheus knew, afterwards, the dangers of looking
    too closely at the silence, of doubting what it might bear.
    Think of him ascending from the depths, not hearing
    her voice or footfall, not seeing her face. This morning,
    also by myself, I bend to attend the furnace’s smolder.
    Three deer digging under the wild apple tree
    in the garden startle and run down the slope.

    ~ Luisa A. Igloria
    01 28 2011


  2. Dave, please use this slightly revised version.
    Thanks, Luisa

    _ _ _

    Intercession

    “Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,
    Quae sub his figuris vere latitas…
    [I adore you devoutly, O hidden God
    truly present under these veils…]”
    – St. Thomas Aquinas

    The silence of falling snow perhaps is like the hush
    that lives somewhere in each moment of great
    preparation: as for instance in Pieter van der Borcht’s
    medieval copperplate engraving, when you would not know,
    unless you read the captions, that the fierce and terrible
    mangled faces of the lion and the lioness are from
    their desperate expenditure of chi so that their stillborn
    cub might live– under the gnarled cypress and rock,
    see how its body writhes, stretching and coming to at last
    under the double blowtorch of breath. And what of the meal
    that the pelican gathers for her young from the cabinet
    of her own breast, bright speckled clusters of blood from
    the vine? Feathers fragranced with cedar, the phoenix
    bursts into flame then crests from its ashes on the third
    day; the unicorn comes to lay its head on the virgin’s lap,
    and the foliage glistens like a page of illuminated
    text. Orpheus knew, afterwards, the dangers of looking
    too closely at the silence, of doubting what it might bear.
    Think of him ascending from the depths, not hearing
    her voice or footfall, not seeing her face. This morning,
    also by myself, I bend to attend the furnace’s smolder.
    Three deer digging under the wild apple tree
    in the garden startle and run down the slope.

    ~ Luisa A. Igloria
    01 28 2011



  4. DOWN THE SLOPE

    Yet all the precedent is on my side:/I know that winter death has never tried/The earth but it has failed;…/It cannot check the peeper’s silver croak. — Robert Frost, The Onset

    I would run down the slope and catch myself
    a rolling ball of snow before it falls into the ravine,
    but walking through the silently falling snow
    at the trail is a choice for these creaking knees—
    no more gossoon games defying gravity for me
    or flying off the hillside edge into fluff below
    among the stiffened bramble and wild apple tree.

    There’s warmth in the silence of falling snow:
    I feel his gentle hands on my nape, I hear him,
    I ask him if he would drink a pint with me
    if I had reached beer-guzzling age before
    he’d make his final trek, before he’d leave,
    but I hear his whistling for the wind instead
    and tug at his wayward kite now puncturing
    some sombre summer sky in San Fernando.

    O, how I’d run down the barren slopes to catch
    his fallen kite among the burnt logs of the kaingin*
    but these are flakes I find myself catching
    and whipped out twigs that break the silence
    of falling snow. O my father.

    __________
    *Clearing out burnt trees

    — ALBERT B. CASUGA
    Mississauga, 1-28-11


  5. Oh, Dave. Look at that funny boner on the second line of the last stanza: “burnout logs”. Should have been “burnt logs” (otherwise, with the extra vowels, it would have been a disease or an unknown giant virus) (:) Then again, is it a symptom of a “burn out” from poetic limbering on the Porch? Or a winter-cum-snow-induced hypothermia? (:)

    Ora pro nobis. Help! Gracias, Dave.

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