A thumping in the crawlspace under the house and muddy footprints in the snow: the resident woodchuck is in heat. Rain drums on the roof.
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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
A thumping in the crawlspace under the house and muddy footprints in the snow: the resident woodchuck is in heat. Rain drums on the roof.
Comments are closed.
awkward, unsilvery,
wake the peeled off-
white light wrung
meat shrunk
thumpin’
shank shiv,
gushest glister,
taut slit-
slot, stunt-
less stump
slump —
horny biotch in the crawlspace,
muddy hindpaws on the prowl,
brainless spittle dribble,
unthrobbing scribble drivel
Little Waking Song
Muddy prints in the veins’
ruby-colored tunnels,
thumping in the crawlspace
underneath the ribs;
rain drumming on the balconies
of the heart.
~ Luisa A. Igloria
02 25 2011
Ha! I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away. And an especially creative transformation of the prompt material, too.
The woodchuck was too noisy anyway. And other than feeling like parts of me are excavation sites, I am fine though slightly fuzzy.
Well, that’s good, I guess.
Around lunch time, I looked out the back door of my mom’s kitchen and saw a woodchuck going past, probably the same one heading for another burrow, undeterred by rain and soggy snow.
And I thought I would pinchhit for the super-poet with this much ado about a thumping woodchuck.
Welcome back on the porch, Luisa.
A CRAWLSPACE IN EDEN
1.
Thumping under a crawlspace,
the poor furtive resident woodchuck
has joined the ranks of human lovers,
and got itself a cranny while in heat:
What is revolting about the freedom
to swing on the branches of maple
when even jays and robins find it easy
and O so quickly practical in flight?
Has the figleaf myth finally befuddled
this spritely unshackled Abelard to hide
an urgent function to please his Heloise
in a cramp and cobwebbed crawlspace?
2.
In the orchard sprawl of a forbidden
garden, once upon a lonely time, a man
begged for a woman and gave his rib
that it may grow into loins and haunches
and He said that she looked good like
the sun and the stars and the appletree
whose ripened fruit they cannot share
or lose the blindness of celibate bliss.
What does it matter that a nook is dark
or dank or deep? Is this not a paradise
regained? How so, when the wildness
of wind and throbs of sea and waves are
bartered for the silky warmth of sheets
in antiseptic rooms and lose in turn
the East of Eden, where love is free
and unafraid and brighter than a crawlspace?
—Albert B. Casuga
Mississauga, 02-25-11
In the Eden that was less
is more, a fig leaf was like
Thoreau’s lake– earth’s eye,
in which the beholder measured
the depth of his own nature:
small tendril, wisp curling back
toward the safety of the thigh
even as the tree, the world,
its littlest creatures begged
to be numbered and named.
– 02 25 2011
A philosopher-poet’s view, indeed! “A fig leaf was earth’s eye, in which the beholder measured the depth of his own nature.”
Nature being what biology mandates, it is the “fig leaf” that serves as a “caveat” to the coy—“noli me tangere” (touch me not) unless you mean it, for from this act the Trinity’s sublime “e pluribus unum” (from the many One) turns love to LOVE. That should be free and unafraid.
What we have is the “tree”, pruned, but still a refuge for even the “littlest creatures that seek to be numbered”. From the depths of this nature, man can ascend toward his “summum bonum” (his highest good): God Who is Love (the last time I looked out of my crawlspace).