Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Before sight, sound—
Before dawn, nothing but wind and trains.
Though I am no diadem, take me into the day
like an offering to the third eye—
In the crown of a birch, the evening star
still burns: so fiercely,
even the fast-moving clouds
can’t extinguish it.
—Luisa A. Igloria
12.24.2010
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Here, too, the air fills more often now with the sudden
spasm of wings— pausing at the junction for the light
to change, you wonder about metaphors,
about how starlings wheel in unison: at first,
a ribbon wound round and round the milky
breasts of hills, and then no more
than a tiny constellation stippling the sky;
how everything’s feathered by the rhythm
of its own wind, rising and falling
even after the gears have turned.
—Luisa A. Igloria
12.23.2010
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
Each day’s a letter
from the unknown.
Yesterday’s missive
came on a plate
of beaten silver.
Today, the hollows
brimming with shadow
are legible. The only
comfort, a fox
squirrel crossing the yard,
its tail a mellow flame
floating in its wake.
—Luisa A. Igloria
12.22.2010
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
How do we know the brown creeper fishing
in the dark valleys of the walnut tree’s bark
could not tell this landscape
from the moon’s? Past midnight, we craned
our necks toward the heavens’ gathered dark
and saw the shadow-play of bodies
entering each other’s path: the brief
interruption and embrace of light
by dark and dark by light, the face
of one passing over the other when
they’re perfectly aligned. Then
without rancor, without remorse
the plumb line lifts— and it seems
the world is as it was before, though all
that has transpired has changed
even the color of the morning sky.
—Luisa A. Igloria
12.21.2010
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
On otherwise lifeless
tansy stalks, a green sprig
and a single yolk-
colored bloom. Snowflakes
drift past: far-flung voyagers,
their exile brief, their nostalgia
cut and crystalled with salt.
Harbor me in cold earth,
my winter lover. I long
for home most of all
when small birds come
to forage for seed
and light sieves
through cracks
in stones.
—Luisa A. Igloria
12.18.2010
Borrowing lines from the Morning Porch entry for December 4.
Because we’ve loved,
the soft calls and dark
moving forms of sparrows
at dawn seem covert,
even illicit— Furtive
like some joys
tasted on the wing,
keen in their retreat
as any bladed thing.
—Luisa A. Igloria
12.17.2010
Borrowing lines from the Morning Porch entry for December 17.
I watch crows circle a dark carcass
a hundred yards off through the woods.
Only this white backdrop could make
bearable, the way the elements
have chosen whatever’s returned
as offering to the wheel. In spring
or summer we’ll come across its bones
under new growth of grass, bleached
white as stars that filter light
all this way through nets of trees.
—Luisa Igloria
12.16.2010
Borrowing lines from the Morning Porch entry for December 13.
What leaf is small and black and falls
more slowly than a feather?
What ink washes deeper blue
then sable as it nears the shore?
What crystal spangles every
lidded eye on trees and bushes?
What letter writes itself over
and over in the wind?
A fire dances up in the trash burner,
the brightest thing.
—Luisa Igloria
12.14.2010
*
This one borrows lines from my Morning Porch entry of October 21, 2008. (The title is my own.) Thanks, Luisa!
Dawn: in absolute silence,
a pileated woodpecker
hitches its way up
a locust trunk, silhouette
pivoting like a pawl
on an invisible ratchet—
consider this early
summons, this parking
ticket—momentary stay
before the hubbub
and transmission
of gears.