“…so hard to hear the music of what happens. Every day some poet dies from the strain.” ~ D. Bonta
Did you slip away when we weren’t looking,
did you see a white wading bird? Did you hear
the water arguing with itself, its longest
and most faithful lover? Did the branches
hang low over the water, did the reclusive
fish lift their heads to see? Did the dry
circle in the middle of the field burst
into flames at noon? Did the flood
rise step by step through the halls
and cathedrals of our towns?
Did you feel the warmth of fingerprints,
faint florets of breath so recently left,
it seems, by those who peered
momentarily through the glass
before turning and moving away?
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.