Charms

What did we hear that morning?
The sound of deer running through the woods;
and from over the ridge, that highway whine.

You said, The left hand is for warding off,
the right for receiving
. I tried to remember
the sequence of gemstones looped around the wrist—

peridot, bauxite, rose quartz, crystal, amethyst:
each one strung and tuned to the heart-strings.
So we reverberate to each other’s calling:

silence is a desert hung with midnight stars,
the thrum of quiet waking. Somewhere a wing,
rippling air that the other breathes.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

2 Replies to “Charms”

  1. So we reverberate to each other’s calling: /silence is a desert hung with midnight stars, /the thrum of quiet waking. Somewhere a wing, /rippling air that the other breathes.

    SOMEWHERE

    It is what we have absently forgotten,
    that we still abide in a strange gyroscope
    of happenstance of giving and taking,
    of coming and going, visions and revisions.

    Or there simply is nothing to remember
    from the darkness whence we came except
    the pain of pushing or pulling out of a hole
    into a yet more fearsome cave of struggle.

    Is it dread then that is left in our satchels?
    This journey has neither maps nor diviners
    to guard against a free fall into an abyss
    of irreducible gloom and cold desert silence.

    Is this dome of midnight stars also a strum
    for a quiet waking into a space of loneliness?
    Or are these spaces our own echo chambers
    where ripples of our calls are heard by others?

    Somewhere a wing roils the air that the other
    breathes. Somewhere the tremulous murmur
    of a prayer is answered. Somewhere an old
    question is asked: Am I my brother’s keeper?

    —Albert B. Casuga
    08-28-11

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