Author: Luisa A. Igloria

At night, we hear dim, percussive scrabbling on the roof.
It’s hard to tell what makes these sounds: animal or dream.

But then again, it’s always some kind of hunger
that drives one to the edge. Animal or dream,

whatever sharp fingernail has roused us from sleep
only means the season’s knife has turned. No dream

prepares enough for the shearing of what used to be
green on the branch, lush in the grove. Koi dream,

but closer toward the bottom of the pond— They barely
swish now: scales muted, their gold a murky dream.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

No one’s
too young

for history.
Coming or going

we find fruit
or rind, so many

parts of ourselves:
behind is ahead,

each catapult a skin
aimed for signpost

after signpost—
Poor traveler, boxed

in the present. Open it,
says the billboard.

The present, it means.
Even the Lady of Peace

and Good Voyage
was found at least twice

hiding in the breadfruit
tree, having played

truant from the quiet
of her own shrine:

the pilgrims gone,
the highway empty.

In response to Via Negativa: Leave-taking.

“…if wishes were horses, poor men wald ride.” ~ Proverbs in Scots, 1628

The neighbor across the street hailed me
as I was leaving for work, to ask
for the name of the roofer we’d used
the last time we got a leak.

How’re you doing? I asked,
as he fumbled for a pen and a piece of paper
and I searched through my contacts, recalling
how we heard he’d just been in hospital.

And he looked at me and said, smiling weakly—
Oh you know, one more day. Which is also
one day less— By which he meant, hard
to reckon one way or another at stage four,

cancer. Then he gestured at the slates
on his roof, nothing I could figure from where I stood
of where anything might be amiss in their neat overlap
and pattern. And as we stood in front of his yard

among the thick stands of rosemary he’d planted
and divided, something of the smell of summer
persisted: herbal and astringent, wrapped
close around each woody stalk.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Because the spirits had been here,
we picked up things and knew they

could not be merely of this world.
The clothespins by the hamper, the stain

on the ironing-board’s cover; good shirts
monogrammed with letters that once named

someone who walked and loved and bore
his weight among us, and drove

his secret need— who knows or cares now
the actual reason— into my mother’s body.

Once, twice, a hundred times, I will never know
the actual story. Only that I wish I could find

some antique remnant: brooch with a border
nubby to my touch, cuff links, postcard

inked in code; scent that must have risen
from bodies in the wake of such furtive love.

The glass trembled
away from its stem,
trying to speak

with the voice
of someone long dead.
No? You do not

believe? Explain
to me then how the leaf
reddens in the wind,

how grief after grief
falls from the branch
yet you remember

each vein
on its five-
pointed body.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Paper car
and steamer trunk,
wardrobe of ash—

Crows glossy
in undertakers’ suits,
conferring in the bush—

Tier after tier,
offerings strung
in the city of the dead.

In response to Via Negativa: Burnt Offerings.

In those early years, before there was a garden,
we rented rooms to 2 college girls from Thailand.

They had first names with only one syllable,
which they taught me to write in their script.

Back then, perhaps our city was a destination:
little strip of airport in the hills, the sudden drop

at the end of the tarmac. Breathtaking view of one
road snaking up from the coast. Fog near noon, rain

half the year; postcards framed with pine
and sunflowers. They ate meals with us, dated

local boys. I watched them work on their hair
with rollers, play vinyl records on the turntable,

do their own manicures. Modern in miniskirts,
yet they creased in perfect folds the pleats

of silk-threaded costumes, adjusted gold
headdresses and ten curved brass points

over their fingers. What made me think
of them today, as I pulled sweaters

out of the dryer, picking off the little
balls of lint with my thumb and forefinger?

Inside an envelope of rain, a city sleeps
or stirs, making labyrinths, going about its
business. Has it known another fate than to be
a city teeming inside an envelope of rain?

An envelope of rain is still an enclosure,
whether it is mist that barely falls or a torrent.
Living inside, you cultivate belief in color:
saffron and juniper, even the drab of olive—

And even surrounded by dry dust, groves of olives flourish;
stands of cypress establish hardscrabble existence, root
footholds in landscapes of rock. You don’t see the enclosure:
where I’ve dug in my heels, cultivating this thing I love.