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  1. Dear heart, I take up my tasks again:

    rising in the morning to turn off the alarm
    –from the old French *A l’arme*, meaning to
    the arms, though I have hardly any weapons
    but these limbs, once burnished and nearly
    lovely in their prime; my wits (still for the most
    part, gratefully, intact); and this all too common
    yearning for ease and rest, pleasure and kind words…
    Listen to the small feathered body singing in the dark,
    its faltering lyric familiar as the prayer I’ll don
    as armor for the day: oh faith, oh love, oh courage.

    – Luisa A. Igloria
    04 28 2011


  2. OLD SONGS

    There were songs, and there were songs.
    But the old ones were those that stayed.
    “Sometimes, I wonder why I spend
    the lonely nights, dreaming of a song…”
    Remember that refrain? Do they die?
    Not when you sing them as you putter
    around your plot of roses: “Roses are red,
    violets are blue, sugar is sweet, my love,
    and so are you….” How can they fade?
    Not even when Crosby-like you pine
    for a Mexicali rose: “Stop crying, I will
    come back to you some sunny day.”
    That’s how they come back, don’t they?
    Like the tide kept on erasing those
    love letters you wrote on the sand.
    “O, you laughed when I cried each time
    I saw the tide wash our letters on the sand.”
    But you were young and you kept writing
    though the tide will not stop. But you will.
    It’s like waking up to a familiar song,
    it takes a while before you know it’s new,
    you’ve heard it before, then forgot the words,
    until one day these were just the right words
    for your song after your morning cup of tea.
    Just like that yellowthroat’s warble:
    it’s a late spring, you know, and you heard
    its lilt last fall. Like old songs, they just linger.

    —Albert B. Casuga
    04-27-11



      1. Oh, I won’t vanish! I just don’t think I’ll be doing a new poem daily. Lots of rewriting and arranging on my plate, and only so many hours in a day :-)


  5. Apparently I’m finding your site at the tail-end of a project. Rats. I have to say, I love the concept of communicating so beautifully in 140 characters (or less). My 13 yr old grandson does the NaPoWriMo – I just had to explore. Now I’m hooked.
    Thanks for the inspiration of your Front Porch…

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