Say spill: and think
of what you can offer
with both hands, pour
into dry well, wind
warm around throat
and shoulders
as you lean against
an open doorway. Say
circlet and bar;
edge of small halo
night won’t leave
alone, wants
to take every small
particle in its
mouth; smoke from
a row of citronella
candles. Say hand-
clap and key, say
borrowed flare
swinging its arc
over the gate and back
alley. Say welcome. Say
nothing of ordinance
or contain, diminish.
What is so bitter
that it can’t abide
your visible water-
fall, your simplest
device? So generous:
abundance that fills
every shape and strikes
the oldest bells into
a chorus. Pity the one
that struggles inside
the cloth-draped cage,
the stairwell in which
specks of dust float,
robbed of any chance
to stipple with gold.
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.
Oh, I love it, Luisa! Thanks for remembering me when you have something special to share! Makes me feel special!
You and your loved ones stay super blessed this Christmas and beyond!!
that’s beautiful. I don’t mind being alone, though. As soon as I forget the cloth drape and forget the fallen cups of gold, the cold air of some distant mountain snow ox promises something even more fortuitous than a family dinner.
That’s a good read with lots of feelings and emotions. Just right words for the season.