Ochre and sienna slashed by tremulous
strains of green— here is where the furrows
were gutted by the wheel. It turned as all
things used for purpose dial to the next
toothed radial: what is it about labor
that burnishes the surfaces it works
over or levels down? Change me,
I begged my beloved, I begged the trees,
the light, the river that never needs to think
about changing course; that must hear
but never knows how difficult to keep one
note sustained, aloft in the dark.
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:
- Song of Work
- [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
- 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
As always, I am humbled to have helped spark poetry this good.
Jesus.
…what is it about labor/that burnishes the surfaces it works/ over or levels down?…Change me,/I begged my beloved…
A YEARNING
That mute pebble rolled hither and thither
when the river current rushes downstream
after a thunderstorm, will it sit in the pond,
remain where it is lodged, stay unchanged?
In yet another rush, a stone crusher would
remake it into jagged edged crystal shaped
perhaps to a gem capping a band wrapped
around a fragile finger: an artisan’s manner
of altering the commonplace into a diadem.
But how will I change you? Into what shall
I change you? Would I were your Pygmalion,
maybe then, I could find my Galatea in you.
—Albert B. Casuga
05-19-11
Dave, thanks for the many opportunities for poetry.
Dale – !