Dear fellow wanderer, familiar now as my twin,
more handsome than my shadow: all these years
we’ve stopped at the same wayside inn to share
quick meals, a cup of coffee, talk about our days
and where we’ve been— And yet we never linger
longer than an hour, perhaps two, before the claims
of the world descend again. But now I don’t know
which is more magnetic: that tilt of sky, the road,
plain countryside rampant with scent, tall grass
where the wind could lift our names higher.
Memory or dream, was that your kiss under my
eyelid’s flicker? I miss you even before you’ve taken
leave. This morning is full of the cries of woodpeckers—
part ululation, part rusty hinge. Your heart goes
with them, or forages among the stones with sparrows,
trusting in what it finds. You never say So long
or Au revoir, only Next time will be sweeter.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Always a Story
- Landscape with Sudden Rain, Wet Blooms, and a Van Eyck Painting
- 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 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]
- Letter to Love
- 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
You never say So long/ or Au revoir, only Next time will be sweeter.
RETURN MAIL (AFTER LETTER TO LOVE)
Fancy hearing from you after some time.
I have gone back to that wayside inn more
times that I would care to remember:
and, like you, I would wonder how a day
would be like without you calling out before
you leave: A la prochaine! And sweeter!
Never goodbye. Never Au revoir. Nunca.
But next time, it will be the tryst of trysts.
We will quaff our wine from overflowing cups,
we will laugh at reflections of our faces
in the ponds we throw wishing pebbles in;
we will wish for the hours to last longer,
for the glances to linger. We will stay longer.
We will wish we had met when there was
still time, and we were much younger,
and braver, and mad with a world that did
not need to have memories of a wayside inn.
—Albert B. Casuga
04-15-11