[ Also a partly found poem after Brian Doyle’s Joyas Voladoras; with thanks to Lina Sagaral Reyes for the link ]
I don’t know whose translucent wings those are
twitching, disappearing into a knothole in the ceiling;
but in the throes of great uncertainty I am
asked to consider the miniature:
– A heart the size of a pencil eraser, beating ten
times a second, hammering faster than we could hear.
– A heart that fuels flights more than five
hundred miles without stopping to rest.
– Hot heart that kisses at least a thousand flowers a day
but cold, slides into a torpor from which it might no longer rouse.
– Oh my constellation of fears, shamed by a wingstroke
smaller than a baby’s fingernail, thunderous as the world’s wild waterfalls.
– Heart like a race car engined by color, buffered
by wind, stripped for nothing but flight.
– Chant of bearded helmetcrests and booted racket-tails,
violet-tailed sylphs and crimson topazes.
– Rosary of charismatic names: amethyst woodstars and
rainbow-bearded thornbills, pufflegs and spatuletails.
– You’ve found me out: I have a bag of tortoise coins. I’ve spent them
like a miser, hoarding each little bit of copper against that one stupendous day.
– I’ve lived mostly alone in the bricked-up house of my heart,
but a wind teeters at the door, smelling of skin and apple breath.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Aperture
- Familiar
- Landscape, with Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
- Prognosis
- Listings
- Grenadilla
- Aubade
- El Sagrado Corazon
- Consolation
- Three (More) Improvisations
- Reconnaissance
- The Gift
- Goldfinch in the Garden
- Talon
- What Cannot Eat
- Happiness
- Defense
- Petition to Fullness
- Heart you Want to Lead in from the Cold
- Unending Lyric
- Trace
- Prospecting
- Dear modest four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath
- Shit
- Ode to the Pedicure Place at the Mall
- Defiler
- Letter to Attention
- Real
- Discordant
- Dowsing
- Landscape, with Incipient Questions
- Letter to Stone
- Orison
- Milagrito: Eye of the Raven
- Epithalamium
- What You Don’t Always See
- Going to the Acupuncturist in the Market
- Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser
- Migrant Letters
- The Road of Imperfect Attentions
- In the Country of Lost Hours
- Morning Lesson
- Reprieve
- Song of the Seamstress’s Daughter
- Landscape, with Construction Worker, Ants, and Gull
- End Times
- Dream Landscape, with Ray-bans and Leyte Landing
- Pantoum, with Spiderweb and Raindrops
- Assassin’s Wake
- Shroud Villanelle
- Dear Annie Oakley,
- Landscape, with Red Omens
- Late Summer Landscape, with Twilight and Daughters
- Ghazal of Unattainable Silence
- Try
- Occasional
- Distance, Then
- Turning
- Noon Prayer
- Acompañamiento
- In the Convent of Perpetual Adoration
- State of Emergency
- Storm Warning
- Charms
- Goodbye, Irene
- The Lovers
- Currents
- Dream of the Four Directions
- Chainus
- Lost Lyric
- Dear recklessness, dear jeweled
- Gleaning
- Bearing Fire
- The Summer of the Angel of Death
- Veneer
More hummingbirds! Great stuff. Damn. (FWIW, I blogged a bit about hummingbirds back in 2005.)
Wow, that hummingbird poem by Luisa Igloria is incredible. That is the kind of poem that makes my heart ache and makes me want to say something to match that poet’s vision. I think we refer to it in human language as “inspiring.” In the language of hummingbirds, it is something else entirely, and very lovely…like a “hot heart that kisses at least a thousand flowers a day,” and not unlike the smell of “skin and apple breath.” Belissima! Thank you for sharing it, Dave.
Mil gracias, Lisa. As you can see, I too have been inspired.
I love this Luisa. I wrote a hummer poem the other day myself. Must be in the air–tiny hearts and wings.
Oh my God. How can a poem be this good? Delighted and incredulous, shaking my head.
You’re a sweetie but you knew that. :)
I’ve lived mostly alone in the bricked-up house of my heart,/but a wind teeters at the door, smelling of skin and apple breath.
ANGST
There are hearts. And there are hearts.
But that bird with one smaller than
a pencil eraser has worked frenziedly
to whirr and flutter over eager flowers
and tender leaves more than my wary
heart has tried to run out and break
free from its bricked-up gaoler, afraid
that one day I would lose that teetering
shadow at the door, pine for that scent
I run to on evenings like this, to a deep
smell of skin, and to taste his apple breath.
O for an urgent whisper on a whiff of wind!
Would the murmur of wings still be there,
to keep my heart gentle and unshuttered?
—Albert B. Casuga
07-08-11
Reposted in:
http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.com/2011/07/angst.html
Lovely, Luisa! How have you been?
Hi Jing – so nice of you to drop by here! Hope you visit often. xo to you
I have been searching for poems to be incorporated in the Philippine high school book (21st-century Literature from the Philippines and the World) I am working on. I found this well-crafted poem by an outstanding Filipino poet praiseworthy. With your permission, can I include it among the reading selections in the said book? I look forward to your favorable reply.