Singing Bowl

This entry is part 34 of 92 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2011

Malleable heart, mouth open to the sky and rain,
my discipline is to learn your one singing note—

to fish it out of the depths of a fountain like a penny
someone tossed there long ago, or like the sun

in hiding. Not so easy to twirl the simple
wooden mallet, learn how the wrist must circle

lightly around the rim; or when it comes, how to loft
its brassy bangle, let it eddy across the grass.

About

Via Negativa is a unique experiment in daily, poetic conversation with the living and the dead. Dave Bonta founded the site in 2003 and Luisa A. Igloria joined in 2010. Guest authors contribute as well. Dave writes daily erasure poems to discover the poetry hidden in the Diary of Samuel Pepys. Luisa has been writing and posting a poem a day since November 2010, often in response to Dave’s entries at The Morning Porch. Collections of poems first published at Via Negativa include Luisa’s The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis and Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser, and Dave’s Ice Mountain and Breakdown: Banjo Poems. Read more…

Dave Bonta says:

April 22, 2011 at 10:47 pm

And I see Luisa’s posted a photo of the bowl in question.

Albert B. Casuga says:

April 25, 2011 at 8:38 pm

Malleable heart, mouth open to the sky and rain,/my discipline is to learn your one singing note—/to fish it out of the depths of a fountain like a penny/someone tossed there long ago, or like the sun/in hiding.—“Singing Bowl”, Luisa A. Igloria

A SECOND TIME AROUND

Is it your one singing note that I am deaf to,
one you have always kept unsung, unheard?

How deep must I plunge into the whirlpool
that your malleable heart has hidden, unmarked,

uncharted, like uncollected coins grown old
in a broken fountain, tokens of desire or whimsy?

Dare I fish it out, this one uncollected penny,
from what depths it has reached in that well?

When you tossed it away, it was best forgotten
like some wilted petals in a convent’s breviary.

I have coveted that one note, I have haunted
the barnacled wayside fountain, brackish now,

where you must have thrown it like a shrug
one winter over your cold uncovered shoulder.

In spring thaw, I could see it again, leaden
and rusty as the sun hidden by some penumbra,

and I must collect it now, make it sparkle
once again, rub it on my sleeve, and wrap it

until I could wheedle from its sheen that
one note you have always kept unsung, unheard.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-25-111

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