What leaf is small and black and falls
more slowly than a feather?
What ink washes deeper blue
then sable as it nears the shore?
What crystal spangles every
lidded eye on trees and bushes?
What letter writes itself over
and over in the wind?
A fire dances up in the trash burner,
the brightest thing.
—Luisa Igloria
12.14.2010
*
This one borrows lines from my Morning Porch entry of October 21, 2008. (The title is my own.) Thanks, Luisa!
Ach, I envy you, Mr Bonta: and envy is not one of my usual modes.
Pretty splendid, eh? I was honored enough to be retweeted by Roger Ebert, but this periodic enpoeming by Luisa Igloria is more flattering by another whole order of magnitude!
A rich collaboration.
“What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter.”
Thanks for the comment, Joe. I hadn’t thought about that poem.