In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.
THE PORTRAIT
My endlessly tattling nieta asks:
“Who is that old woman on the wall, abuelo?
Why does she follow me wherever I go?”
I have always meant to dust it off,
this picture on the wall: a patrician pose,
an arching neck, a hint of a shy smile.
“No one you know. But sing me another song,
that one about a new song unto the world.
How does that go again? Sing a new song.”
“Her eyes are sad, and they always follow me.
Why does she do that, abuelo. Is she lonely?
And she has a funny-looking dress. Tra-la, lala.”
But that was another time. Another world.
At sundown I look into those eyes, and I go there,
beside her, and sing old songs. O, the old songs!
The late spring wind ruffles the gossamer curtains
that brush against the jangling chime bells: outside
the wind has no regard for our little nostalgias.
—Albert B. Casuga
04-22-11