2/24/2011

12

Winter on this side, winter on the other side, and in between the road’s dead grass and gravel. One crow cries, high and shrill.

12 Comments


  1. A Brief Snow in Portland

    Portland pretends to snow — very pretty!
    but it’s frosting and frippery.

    A single crow calls for company, her low cough rising
    to a shrill confident shriek.

    The byways are already black, the eaves already running,
    a whisper of water gushes in gutters:

    the hard hot pulse of Portland
    will not pause for a moment.


  2. Divine Wind

    Three black crows
    in kamikaze formation
    plummet through the hemlock branches
    to gannet into the flooded creek.

    Shaking off the water
    they rise to the heights
    to hurtle right back down again.

    Ah, just a banzai game I see.


  3. Nave

    Above the road’s dead grass and gravel,
    beneath the raftered lattice of tree limbs,
    one crow cries, high and shrill. Some days

    there’s nothing intermediate, only
    the line that cleaves between suspension
    and release. I’ve walked from back

    door to gate to rutted street.
    And the times I’ve done it over–
    the bees fluting their heady pollen

    one season, the moths tearing
    their shrouds at dusk. When I
    come in, sometimes I peel

    the burr off the hems of pants,
    and twilight has come to rest
    its arms on the window ledge.

    – Luisa A. Igloria
    02 24 2011



  5. The Road Taken

    There were no other roads to the potato patch
    tilled by my abuela, feeding the whole cowering clan
    while they hid in caverns cut through mountain
    ridges enveloping the barrios where I was born.

    Mop-up kempetai squads roamed the hills
    but we were safe even from infants’ hungry puling.
    No divine intervention this, God was hiding,too.
    And the road they took had dead grass and gravel.

    On either side of the path, there were burnt trees.
    Bombed out nipa huts, freshly dug graves,—
    and from the depths of the valley engulfed by hills
    a crow’s shrill cry echoed to mock the marauders.

    And we did not even need these winters.

    —Albert B. Casuga


  6. The 3rd stanza’s first two lines should read:

    “On either side of the path, there were burnt trees,
    bombed out nipa huts, freshly dug graves—”

    (Dig, Dug, Dug…eh wot?). Face red. Thanks, Dave.


  7. Dave and all that may follow these posts– I don’t know if I will be able to do what has come to be my daily poetry devotional of sorts, tomorrow (Friday) as I will be going in for some surgery. – Luisa


    3. Best Wishes for a speedy recovery, Luisa!
      Your Poems will be missed.

Comments are closed.