Yellowing aerogramme passed from hand
to hand, creases striped with naphthalene dust,
salt-tang over sleepy villages— here’s
the broken line of hills, the sweep of coast
caught in a curl of cursive, shadowed
cul-de-sac of consonants bent at elbow
and knee. I’ll never know again the knotted
lace of curtains behind which we as children hid,
convinced the sounds behind the heavy doors
were the dead coming to claim our souls.
Here in a sunlit house not my own, I polish
the furniture and floor with oils smelling of fruit
until the heart of the wood is glossy
as an oriole’s song, and the rooms
where you come to me again
are a palace of leaves. Summer light,
thick as honey, pooling in squares at our feet:
we ask to be touched, before being taken.
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:
- Letter to Myself, Reading a Letter
- [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
- Balm
- Landscape, with Wind and Tulip Tree
- From the Leaves of the Night Notebook
- Letter to What Must be Borne
- Redolence
- Night-leaf Tarot
- Trauermantel
- Foretelling
- Aubade, with Sparrow
- Reverie
- Mineral Song
- Layers
- Prayer
- Proof
- Landscape as Elegy for the Unspent
This is really gorgeous, Luisa. Wow. I especially love the first few couplets, the way you move from description of the letter (I can almost feel it in my hand) to description of the landscape and back again.
Whew. Exquisite.
Ditto to what Rachel and Peter said, and I was also grooving on your use of the words naphthalene, tang, aerogramme and cul-de-sac. As is often the case, it came as a very pleasant shock to suddenly encounter some phrases of my own in the midst of such a poem.
This poem gave me goosebumps.
Thank you all… I can never tell where a trigger is going to take me in the poetry. I found many surprises for myself here as well. And plenty of nostalgia, I might add.
Summer light, /thick as honey, pooling in squares at our feet:/ we ask to be touched, before being taken.
A CONVERSATION
Take a look at this strophe, Stick, and weep.
If that’s not a tease, I know it is poetry. How so?
Summer light in squares thick as honey catches
us aquiver with blends of what eyes can see
that tongues can lick, a melange of what rooms
can become when—as palaces of leaves—they
transform into sylvan hideaways engulfing
all who are bewitched by redolent fragrance
come like warm palms caressing cold backs
that must be touched. Poems are made of these,
Stick, like a strange amalgam of brew salving
the hurt and the lonesome before they sleep.
I need that brew tonight, Stick, before I sleep.
—Albert B. Casuga
05-27-11