4 Comments


  1. Ghazal of the Almost Obvious

    Small leaves like torn paper sleeves on
    the dogwood; green arms barely obvious.

    In a quiet room with mirrors, the sounds
    of breathing seem multiplied, more obvious.

    Faint red smudge at the wood’s edge– if
    burning, if blooming, not quite obvious.

    Small rain on an east wind, small sparrow,
    small cloud: the moon’s fingernail, not obvious.

    I burn sheaves of things on the open plain
    and look for signs of what’s not quite obvious.

    Thread me silk, thread me linen and hemp.
    The shroud’s undone every night, isn’t it obvious?

    – Luisa A. Igloria
    03 06 2011
    Sent via my Blackberry


  2. I love the way the look of the forest changes this time of year. For us it was Indian Plum- first white flowers, and now leaves beginning to obscure our views. The woods are always changing- keeps it interesting…



  4. HALF EMPTY WAGER

    I had barely finished whittling on my cane handle—
    a duck-like protuberance on a branch I found wedged
    between a broken shovel and a headless broom—
    when I got startled by an unexpected trill, a song
    sparrow warbling astride a neatly gathered pile of twigs
    ready for the refuse hauling. Rain has washed the yard
    of the rotting leaves freed from frozen mounds of snow,
    and the east wind has brought a whiff of warmer air.
    I made a hurried wager with the sprawled Labrador
    gnawing on his day-old bone on my soggy porch —

    “If this twitter does not bode the season’s turn
    or bear tidings of a premature spring, I will wrap
    myself away and stay asleep, and give this cane
    its full reprieve from propping my twisted knees
    and aching body in the dreamed-of walks through
    the woods’ edge, and leave the swelling buds to fall off
    yet again from expectant branches like flushed victims
    of fraud swindled off their hopes by false pulses of spring,
    or aborted by an investment of bad weather in the dotage
    of a dotard Earth grown weary of wanton tenants
    who cannot be bothered to clean their porches.”

    I say, old chap. Did you just say, spring will be returning?

    —Albert B. Casuga
    Mississauga, Ont.

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