Cream and magenta on asphalt, the blooms that ripened
early on the dogwood now loosened by sudden rain—
Do you know why the couple touch hands in the Van Eyck
painting? Their decorum holds the house pillars up,
plumps the cushions, velvets the drapes for commerce,
theirs and the world’s. See how the mirror repeats
and reflects them back to each other, though crowned
by a rondel of suffering. In her green robe with its
multitude of gathers, she casts a faint shadow on the bed.
And the fruit on the window sill might be peach,
might be pear, might be apple– something with glimmering
skin, like the lover and the scar he wore like a badge
to the side of his throat. Fickle nature, cold and grainy
as the day that spills its seed above the fields, indiscriminate,
so things grow despite themselves. And there was the one
who said never, but turned from you to rinse his hands.
Who else loves his own decorum as I do? The names
of trees are lovely in latinate. I can’t recite those,
can only name their changing colors: flush
and canary, stripped and rose; or moan like the voice
of a cello in the leaves, imitating human speech.
—Luisa A. Igloria
03 21 2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Always a Story
- Letter to Implacable Things
- Landscape, with Cave and Lovers
- Miniatures
- Letter to Self, Somewhere Other than Here
- Ghazal with a Few Variations
- Letter to Silence
- Landscape, with Returning Things
- Postcard to Grey
- Not Yet There
- Letter to the Street Where I Grew Up (City Camp Alley, Baguio City)
- Between
- Parable of Sound
- Letter to Providence
- Glint
- The Beloved Asks
- Letter to Longing
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Twenty Questions
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Interlude
- Villanelle of the Red Maple
- Letter to Leaving or Staying
- Salutation
- Letter to Love
- Letter to Fortune
- Territories
- Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe
- Dear season of hesitant but clearing light,
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- Singing Bowl
- [temporarily removed by author]
- Risen
- Refrain
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Dear heart, I take up my tasks again:
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Landscape with Sudden Rain, Wet Blooms, and a Van Eyck Painting
- Risk
- Vocalise
- Tremolo
- Interior Landscape, with Roman Shades and Lovers
- Bird Looking One Way, Then Another
- Gypsy Heart
- Landscape with Carillon
- Letter to Ardor
- Landscape, with Salt and Rain at Dawn
- Marks
- Landscape, with Sunlight and Bits of Clay
- Slaying the Beast
- Measures
- In a Hotel Lobby, near Midnight
- Landscape with Shades of Red
- Between the Acts
- Letter to Duty
- Letter to Nostalgia
- You
- Song of Work
- Balm
- Landscape, with Wind and Tulip Tree
- From the Leaves of the Night Notebook
- Letter to What Must be Borne
- Redolence
- Letter to Myself, Reading a Letter
- Night-leaf Tarot
- Trauermantel
- Foretelling
- Aubade, with Sparrow
- Reverie
- Mineral Song
- Layers
- Prayer
- Proof
- Landscape as Elegy for the Unspent
- Vespertine
I like how my “cold and rainy” became “cold and grainy.” :) And I’m envious of your much more advanced spring. Our first crocus just opened yesterday!
Love that cello.
Ditto on the cello. And the change. Exactly what I was thinking!
A particularly gorgeous offering this one.