So we’ve moved out of the years.
I am finally back upstream
and, but for their holiday grins
on every bookcase, the boys
were never born, it was a dream.
Holding pattern
A wise blogging friend advised me today to stop running myself ragged trying to restore everything at once, and take as much time as I need to think through the gnarly problem of what to do with Via Negativa long-term. Moving Poems and The Morning Porch are back up on a new host, Luisa is continuing her daily poems in response to my porch posts (scroll down to see her three most recent), and I have this beachhead here until I sort things out.
Another blogger I admire recently migrated her site off of cheap shared web hosting and onto WordPress.com (which is about the same annual cost once you get the necessary upgrades), and has urged me to do the same. I’m very tempted. Via Negativa’s database is so bloated, I can’t even upload it here without trying to learn something called SSH. But even if I manage that, I have no guarantee that I won’t get kicked off this server, too, for exceeding CPU limits. This is a problem on all shared web hosting arrangements, from what I gather. Via Negativa has simply gotten too big for this environment, I think, and it’s time to either pay hundreds of dollars a year for VPS (a virtual private server — the next step up), or learn Drupal and attempt to export this beast to that more sturdily built content management system. Both options are way beyond my current technical abilites. At WordPess.com, by contrast, I’d never again have to worry about getting shut down for excessive CPU usage or crashing because of a traffic spike. Through some minor miracle I managed to import almost all VN posts to a nonce site there today, which almost made up my mind for me. But it would mean significant changes and sacrifices: most incoming links will be broken because of a slightly different permalink structure; the series will no longer work as such since they don’t support that taxonomy there (I would probably just use tags); I won’t have a fancy podcasting plugin and will have to content myself with a simple audio player for the Woodrat podcast; etc. And I will miss tinkering with the controls and pretending I really understand what makes it all fly.
Letter to You, Again
Dear heart, dear absent one, yes I’m still talking to you: more threadbare than the shroud that veils the moon— not quite full, mottled blue and silver— nevertheless my halting speeches aspire to permanence and shape. I’ve seen the Three Immortals, pilgrims too, with their dusty paper scrolls and staffs and red-ripe peaches plump as children’s cheeks. Is it unseemly to want more, to be as one skein of silk looped richly in the arms of defoliated trees, more than mere sigh in the shadow of departed wings? How long since I lay in the arms of untrammeled time, slow as love and thick as honey; how long since I first troubled the fret of tangled knots, looking for your hidden face? Each night the curtain lowers its velvet drape. Still unspent: my good-luck coin, glimmering fitfully beneath.
—Luisa A. Igloria
11 09 2011
In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.
May I have your attention please.
This is your captain speaking. We have begun final descent from limbo and expect to be landing in Via Negativa soon. Please remain seated and turn off the overhead lights.
Late
And now, in the afternoons, the ache
and blaze of sunlight before it’s doused,
quick as the tremor I remember: what
passed your lips one day when you
declared: I fell in love a long time ago.
There’s always that moment when I am
startled by the darkness of the sky; then
farther out, the sudden closeness of stars.
—Luisa A. Igloria
11 08 2011
In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.
What Leads to Marriage, in a Mostly Roman Catholic Country
In order to avert a crisis,
the family comes as one
to plead their case: no one
bothers to verify if it is true
a child is on the way—
how could it not be so?
Quick to the church,
and quickly exit with streams
of jaunty orange and gold;
and all that rice, rained on
the heads of all who’ve
gathered at the door:
and all that fractures
and multiplies in little
bits of rattling white.
—Luisa A Igloria
11 07 2011
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch
Landscape, on the Brink of the World to Come
Eschatology: a branch of theology concerned with the final events
in the history of the world or of humankind.
What else are they waiting for, those ten
watchful virgins? The bridegroom’s been
promised, the nuptials and the feast
arranged. And the ones they send away
to buy oil from merchants in the town?
What becomes of them? Night has fallen,
the year bent hard toward solstice.
In the overhead branches, wind moves
like knives, scoring each surface met.
In the distance, those windows hung
with curtains and ablaze with light—
Why can’t I believe all that were
turned away have been unfaithful,
or merely unprepared? Of them, who
sleeps in abandoned sheds or among
unpolished stones in the field,
gathering scraps and twigs for
kindling? I’ve seen their limbs
offered up to the cold in sleep,
as the bus hurtled along the edge
of highway. At daybreak, a bird
dares to disrupt the silence.
Only the sun warming the peaked roofs
knows how one side begins to steam
while the other remains in shadow.
—Luisa A. Igloria
11 06 2011
In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.
Alma Mater
The shadow of a doubt returns from exile to find another in its place, a shadow of suspicion swollen almost into a shadow of unrest. Where once an Air Force pilot passed out leaflets claiming the Holocaust was an accounting error, now there’s a new shrine to old money. Security cameras bristle around the base of a drilling rig crowned with lights. A bicycle chained to a rack begs mutely for release. The doubt is reasonable now, a respected member of the community, & no one seems to mind that he hasn’t cast a shadow in years. He’s careful around mirrors. On the cover of his authorized biography, he stretches one powerful arm, a cross stripped of the usual ambiguity. The shadow of a smile hangs over him like a broken moon.
*
Prompted by this.
Wind Chill Warning
Like a restless spirit, the wind
has thrashed through the branches
all night, and is still not done
in the morning— upending some
deck chairs, the small newspaper
dispensers on the corner, signs
on campus that were up yesterday,
announcing the football game. Hard
frost at dawn— thin blossoms
feather with ice crystals and then
lie limp, uncurled by the warming thaw
at noon. I, too, have been confused
by so much weather— burrowing under
a summer-thin quilt and craving warmth,
waiting for the heat to kick in.
More blankets, wool socks. But cold,
anyway, in the bones. Whatever you do,
a teacher said to me once, stay
grounded in the center; don’t let
the fire in your gut go out.
—Luisa A. Igloria
11 04 2011
In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.
In plain sight
The hunters wrapped their treestand in camouflaged cloth. When it came time to paint the roof, they chose blue. That way, they thought, it might blend into the sky, forgetting that the deer see in black-and-white. Or maybe they remembered, and painted it to please themselves. But now their sky has fallen in, a lid on a sagging box nailed to the twin trunks of a rock oak that pull it back and forth between them in the ridgetop winds, like a prized toy.
Continue reading “In plain sight”