In the half-dark: branches and twigs, statues,
cobbled walks stenciled with snow— Always,
the way half-known, half-erased. Purpose,
the key simply waiting its turn in the lock.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) 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 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. 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.
ARDENT WISH
That night will come, fully felt, indelible,
there will be no key to turn on the door:
it was always with me in my breastpocket
where it is easy enough to feel, the throbs
underneath it urging me to take the path
home where you said my stenciled footsteps
can still be traced even with the early snow
on the cobble stones. I shall retrace them.
—Albert B. Casuga
12-31-11
“Ardent Wish” is also reposted in http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.com/2011/12/two-poems-for-new-year-2012-bma.html
I really like this.
:) Happy 2012, Dale!