In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-2022). She is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She 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 former US Poet Laureate 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; she also teaches classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk. 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 brew in the cup says bitter, but the tongue—/ the tongue wants to find its way to honey.
HEWERS AND CARRIERS, H&C, Inc.
Of what make, what calibre are you, hewer of wood?
Which well do you fetch water from, carrier of water?
Do measures count you at all as the universe turns?
Hewer: I chopped wood to build catapults for Mt. Rushmore;
Eiffel would be a fantasy without these fingers, mon ami.
Grand blarney all that: just think of your country cottage.
Carrier: Who would bring hard water pails for Chernobyl?
Would Las Vegas glitter without my Hoover Dam water?
Nah, all balderdash that: you’d stink without bath water.
So, pin the medals on us, for all we care. Wood and water—
that’s all you need whatever chill winter frost would bring,
or thirst and sunburn infernal summer would pitch your way.
We are a couple for the ages, hewer and carrier, H&C, Inc.,
we do build homes, but look how without our wiles (services)
this earth would still be canopy under a tent of stars.
Rivers and oceans would still be playgrounds of sharks
and goldfish, mountains would still be Bunyan’s frontiers
where the oak is an oak not timber or log for a brothel cabin.
Puny and downtrodden or spat upon? Hewer and Carrier,
when coupled, though, turns brew to bittter, water to waste,
fish to faeces. O, leave us to stay little, where our tongues
would not wag about Afganistan, Libya, Iran, or Fukushima
but do what tongues do, lick the sweet in the honey, moisten
the welt on the wee one’s forehead bruise, say: luv ya, honey.
—Albert B. Casuga
04-10-11
That was delightful. Thanks!