My heart bows to the field streaked
by the sun’s rare currency this morning
to the worries that call my name
over and over like I am their favorite child
to the ridiculous kindness
of the wild turkeys’ chatter
to you who’ve called
me stranger, friend, lover
to you who’ve sung me to sleep
and kissed me in doorways
to you who’ve made space
for me on this window-ledge of words—
And you on the edge of the field, I bow to you
all in shadow, your patience outlasting us all
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
- 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]
- Salutation
- 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
Oh, this one is particularly lovely.
A VALEDICTION
All that it takes to remember that I am still with you
is this morning’s sun, glaring from a clear blue sky
and I have never absconded, never left your side
even when I found myself at the edge of the field
merely a part of your life’s curious appurtenances,
someone you’d remember when the muezzin calls
from his minaret, or angelus intoned from emporia
microphones, or when the dry season lends penitence
its hauteur from random worshippers of a crucifixion
forgotten in the hill of skulls, a mocking flagelation.
I will be there when litanies of pain fill your evenings,
I will be there when you lose all faith in love or dreams.
At the edge of the field, I will be there, waiting for you
in the shadows, until you finally stop running away from me.
—Albert B. Casuga
a sacro