Familiar

This entry is part 2 of 93 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2011

Like a letter someone writes in the early hours,
as rain turns all the windows to skin.

Like the ink that streaks across the vellum
surface, ending in a flourish or a dash.

Like the light that filters upward from the ground
as mid-day heat; or condenses in beads of sweat.

Like a blur, like a wing, like a shard;
like a face passing behind the shutters.

Like the sky that’s often mistaken for weather;
and the world beneath it going where it goes.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Series Navigation← ApertureLandscape, with Ruby-Throated Hummingbird →

OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES

Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-2022). She is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015; she also teaches classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.

www.luisaigloria.com

3 Replies to “Familiar”

Albert B. Casuga says:

June 23, 2011 at 11:28 am

Like the sky that’s often mistaken for weather;/ and the world beneath it going where it goes.

UNCERTAIN WEATHER

“We have known them all already,
known them all”. Thus, we measure lives,
abandoned hopes, laments, even sighs.

We have heard them all already,
the prayers that remain unanswered
behind bolted doors, darkened rooms.

This anguish over being here and not
here is all too familiar, but like innocent
children, we still look toward times

when we eagerly open holiday boxes
and find surprises no longer there,
but manage to smile anyway, bottle up

a “No thank you,” and move on to other
boxes, only to find feigned familiar
joy that those are still the wanted toys.

Like uncertain weather marked in the sky,
we move on, unchartered, with the flux,
like all things plotted begin then end.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-23-11

Reply
1. Albert B. Casuga says:
  
  June 27, 2011 at 2:26 pm
  
  http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.com/2011/06/uncertain-weather.html
  
  Reply
Dale Favier says:

June 23, 2011 at 1:09 pm

Like the sky that’s often mistaken for weather;
and the world beneath it going where it goes.

Or like that rattling pulse escaping under the fingers:
playing pooh-sticks with the blood of our hearts;
hoping our lives will re-appear
on the other side of the bridge.

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3 Replies to “Familiar”

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