19 Comments


  1. Will this be a year without a spring? My morning thought as well.


  2. THE UNANSWERED QUESTION

    Cold. What would it be like without spring?
    Consider the pillaged villages dismembered:
    infants litter streets haunted by blank faces.
    Consider the disemboweled huts left empty
    by floodwaters welled from dammed levees
    protecting the ricepaddies of the hacienda.
    Consider the forlorn sentry praying for an end
    to the war, his craving for absent warmth
    and his lovers’ caresses, away from home.
    Consider the unanswered pleas of the faithful
    whose unfaithful gods mock them at unlit altars,
    chants gone stale with murmured fears and pain.
    Consider the abiding cold that envelops us,
    and pose the echoed question: will spring be back,
    will the warblers return to a sleeping forest?
    O, the fat daffodil buds will remain on their stalks,
    but the orphaned infants’ cry will fade away
    into a still night, into the cold of an aborted spring.

    —Albert B. Casuga
    Mississauga, ON 04-06-11


  3. Indeed! Who administers the kiss, when forest is the sleeping beauty?


    1. That’s actually the image that was going through my head this morning.


      1. Are you having trouble leaving comments? Because I am. A problem with the new version of WordPress which I just updated to, I think.


    2. You botanical types probably know the name of of that tough, flesh colored cuff that daffodils wear on their necks. All I could think of, as I stopped to look at some this morning, was ace bandages.


      1. Good question. Turns out it’s called the spathe, which I guess makes it the analog of the hood in inflorescences of the arum family.


  5. Dave,
    (My Ageing spellcheck says “levees” instead of levies.) Please revise 5th line to read:
    by floodwaters welled from dammed levees
    Thanks, amigo.


  6. The Beloved Asks

    How do I know you
    have returned?

    The ruffs that soften
    around the necks of daffodils.

    The arrogant bees
    lording it over the trellis.

    Bursts of pollen, tell-tale marks
    like gunpowder on sleeves of pavement.

    In the dark I hear the frogs again,
    whetting their voices on cold creek stones.

    Most of all that tendril of clear
    uncertainty: knowing what could be lost.

    ~ Luisa A. Igloria
    04 06 2011



  8. The Indian Tulip

    Swirl of yellow petticoat,
    crimson dreg of passion
    at the bottom of the heart
    for her man in the plains.

    With unsagging love
    she flounces dream like pleats,
    instep arching she kisses him,
    bares pollens of desire:

    dusts of sun on
    the expanse of blue.


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