Author: Luisa A. Igloria

I pull away every now and then,
when the world’s too hot, too bright,
too bitter; too cold, too merciless

in its inconstancy. Too rough, too
callused, too grainy, too stubborn
to answer the hand that pulls

at its ends and begs it heed. See
the ease with which the robin finds
a bright green morsel to spirit

out of the woods? Above the treeline
it flies, little beak a caret marking where
some buoyancy or joy’s gone missing.

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If some are born to sweet delight and some
are born to endless night, where is the noon
where they might crisscross paths? A sparrow
tumbles from the eaves and auto-corrects
its flight. O wind, perilous as the pulleys that work
their hidden influence on our journeyings,
be gentle on these frail, tired wings.

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Sulfur and sweetness, relish and bite:
you know it’s that good when you cry
from pleasure. Light a single votive

as you chop and mince: it helps to muffle
tears. The husk is a paper tunic, a skin
to wear like another language—

like the woman in Oregon who woke
from dental surgery surprised,
speaking with a foreign accent.

It means the house for what we think
we know is made of swirly layers—
see all those rings that fall away

on the cutting block when you
slice crosswise through? I like to think
that everything we’ve touched,

touches back; and vice versa.
See how a bug has left a red
swelling between my knuckles—

I’ll put some salve on it
until it subsides; then finger this
new site of rescue absently for days.

[LAG-signature date=”06 02 2011″ url=”http://morningporch.com/2011/06/02/159121784″]

“There are tears at the heart of things, and men are touched by what human beings have to bear.” ~ Virgil, Aeneid

Oh love I want to lie in your lap full in the sun,
to bring everything I have that’s querulous,
tremulous, divided from this air dripping
with nectar from the tulip trees in bloom.

Will I remember what this moment
might have been? So often the world
overturns in the bowl of the spoon.
Its silver flashes like a warning at noon.

And still I forgive its afflictions,
what it sows, hard and bright:
salt and ore in the heart of things.

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Some days, I dream a snatch of a poem
standing on a rocky cliff, waiting to rebuff

a tsunami. Only a little phrase, language
rubbed with the odor of the sea, a spray of oil,

a veil of orange. For now, everything is warm:
too warm, too still, too soft from lying in the sun

with its mouth open, waiting for what brings
the coolness of water. The bird on a twig

with its breast rouged red is a prayer.
The bird is a question, or the bird

is an answer; or the bird is a letter.
It flies away. There’s always change.

[LAG-signature date=”05 31 2011″ url=”http://morningporch.com/2011/05/31/159121780″]

Thanks too, to Risa Denenberg for her piece today.

Some days I am nothing
but a hand clumsy at Braille,
feeling for eyelets as I fumble
for the laces of shoes in the dark,
for all the loose ends and bones
of my dislocated selves. A sparrow
chips away somewhere, dutiful
at the task of widening its own
corner of morning. I hear it and
want nothing more than a handful
of seed to bring it home.

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Someone— who?— years ago
traced the lines on my palm to read

by candle-glow what the crossways meant,
the breaks, faint spiderwebbing wrapped

around the edges of my hand to say
how many children I would have,

how many loves, how many times
the heart would bend to the swallowtail’s

random dance. What coins changed
hands, what turn of fortune spilled

its fickle evidence of numbers
on the table? Some years are silken

threads that loosen quickly from flimsy
moorings; some years are patient

caterpillars inching up the rough-barked,
bunioned trees— Any day now a god

might unfurl its wings to rend the canopy;
any day now, that radiant and elusive life.

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“You write to become immortal, or because the piano happens to be open, or you’ve looked into a pair of beautiful eyes.” ~ Robert Schumann

Nymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus 1758)

Little herald of the soul, more sedate
than the hummingbird who comes
in search of sugar, who flashes in and out
of the emerald leaves to drink
nectar from the throats of flowers—
you circle the porch and yard three times
before coming to rest behind my chair.
At first, I think your name has come
from the same springs as reverie,
that wistful song spun from childhood.
And it could very well be, though your
bistre cloak, sooty umber edged
with blue or white, lies open like the covers
of a book of reckoning. The chimes
clink half-finished tunes in the garden
and I hold my hand over my heart
because I know it knows no rest:
it does not want to mourn what
passes from this life, just yet.

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A change of linens, pillows plumped and
mattresses flipped over, spritz of mist

smelling of warm cloves and milk— then finally
I might fall asleep. Sometimes, deep in the night

it rains; and in the morning I find it hasn’t been
a dream. Tarot waiting to be read on a wet

driveway— random lilac, red maple; sharp
green spades that cradled gardenias: what

do they know of warnings and misfortune?
Leaf of the cherry, red heart, organ of fire:

I name you as if I could thread your bones;
I name you not knowing your mystery.

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