Cold. The fat daffodil buds sag on their stalks. Will this be a year without a spring? Will warblers return to find a sleeping forest?
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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
Cold. The fat daffodil buds sag on their stalks. Will this be a year without a spring? Will warblers return to find a sleeping forest?
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Will this be a year without a spring? My morning thought as well.
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
Indeed! Who administers the kiss, when forest is the sleeping beauty?
That’s actually the image that was going through my head this morning.
http://koshtra.blogspot.com/2011/04/oh-my-sweet-darlings.html
So that button doesn’t blow up!
Are you having trouble leaving comments? Because I am. A problem with the new version of WordPress which I just updated to, I think.
No, no trouble.
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.
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.
Dave,
(My Ageing spellcheck says “levees” instead of levies.) Please revise 5th line to read:
by floodwaters welled from dammed levees
Thanks, amigo.
Got it.
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
Beautiful. This is one for the ages, I think.
I agree. My response in Via Negativa.
What Dave said.
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.