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!
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Stay
- “Findings”: the missing Morning Porch poems
- Two more Morning Porch poems from Luisa Igloria and a comment on free culture
- With winter’s gift of unimpeded sight,
- Aubade, with Feathers
- Scherenschnitte
- Solstice
- Heart and Shadow
- “The sudden spasm of wings”
- “Before sight, sound—“
- Four Morning Porch poems
- “Up and down the street, the neighbors…”
- Memento Mori
- “The streets are lined with garbage bins…”
- “Soon the old year must join…”
- Speaking of __
- “For the sun’s approximate blaze…”
- Postcard
- Wake
- Despedida de Soltera
- Filament
- “Paired or unpaired, all in the world…”
- Vertices
- Private: Quicksilver
- Graupel
- Auguries
- Closer
- Menage
- Private: Preludium
- Instructions
- Consonance
- Rosary
- Forager
- Photogram
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Landscape, With Darkness and Hare
- Ghazal of the Dark Water
- What Leaf
- Landscape, with Cardinal and Earring
- Intention
- One Day, That Room
- Landscape, with Small Flakes and Far-off Bandoneón
- Sentence
- Spun
- Intercession
- Recurrence
- Private: Matins
- Landscape, with an End and a Beginning
- Waking
- Thaw
- Spell
- Dim Sun, Dim Sum
- Vanishing Point
- Ghazal of the Open Water
- Monday Landscape, with Clocks Borrowed from Dali
- “Last night’s wet snow…”
- Ephemera
- Landscape, with Water Fountain, Small Clouds and Endless Lyric
- What She Wants
- Landscape, with Mockingbird and Ripe Figs
- Letter to Arrythmia
- Love Poem with Skull and Candy Valentines
- Private: To Flower
- Landscape, with Fake Butterflies and Sick Child
- Letter to Affliction
- Letter to Levity
- Thaw
- Private: Little Girding Song
- Letter to Rubbermaid and Tupperware
- Letter to Spam
- Ellipsis
- Nave
- Little Waking Song
- Imminence
- Private: Ghazal of Wild Things
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.