Honeysuckle in the shade, the day’s
hot store of oils cooling gradually into dusk;
then unexpected rain: thin drizzle a screen
through which late sunshine sifts,
the kind of rain we were told as children
was the spray of tears from God’s eyes.
And the mingled smells of heat and coolness
rouse the blades of memory from their hiding places,
where the musk of your breath mingles with
my own. Each glaucous leaf of the bleeding-heart
cradles its perfect droplet of moisture,
and the air is full of questions. Sometimes
I cannot bear to think past them, to pry them
loose from their trellis of hope and doubt and fear.
The volatile tea-green smells of soap rise up
from the little drawer where I keep fragrances
among the linen— I take out just one leaf
of scent and give myself permission to loosen
the stays from their clasps, the buttons like stars
plucked at cost from their hammered settings.
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 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:
- Balm
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Risk
- Vocalise
- Tremolo
- Interior Landscape, with Roman Shades and Lovers
- Bird Looking One Way, Then Another
- Gypsy Heart
- Like the Warbler
- 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
- 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
Luisa’s poems are so beautiful. I’ve been following them for a while. Does she have anything published?
Lord yes. Click on her author page here for a brief bio and links to her main website, and give a listen to our conversation with Luisa on the podcast last month.
Fiona, thanks for such good words— balm to poets’ hearts :) Let me know if you need further information on my work, I am happy to help if I can.
…”the buttons like stars plucked at cost from their hammered settings.” Lines like this objectify the “balm” that is either the memory of “hopes and fear and doubts” or the steeling of one’s heart to their lingering presence. They cannot be hammered shut, and taking them out of the confines of memories, they are the little fragrances that provide the balm to the “blades of memory (that skulk) from their hiding places.”
The oblique ambiguities are a minefield of nuances. It is so rewarding to dig into them. The long lines harden the image of the hesitation that occasions the prying loose of memories from their “trellis”.
This is Luisa’s most intriguingly beautiful yet. Bravo! (Can’t wait to write the day’s poem-response.)
…the air is full of questions. Sometimes/ I cannot bear to think past them, to pry them/ loose from their trellis of hope and doubt and fear.
BLADED QUESTIONS
Do you still keep the bladed questions
in your closet’s little fragrance drawer?
When you bolted them last, they were
struggling to break out as a conspiracy
of fearsome pain that could break you.
Why test your fearful heart once again?
Gather them like twigs, kindling sticks,
and burn them with the brittle promises.
Past days have no way of turning back,
they travel through dark one-way streets.
Only those bladed questions will return.
Will their cutting edge be blunted then?
Spare your balsam for the dead and dry
days: when they descend, you will need
your balm to salve the hurts that have
yet to come. Leave settings hammered.
—Albert B. Casuga
05-21-11
I wish there was time to read every one of your poems. I am always transported, transfixed. So beautiful, this…