A DIALOGUE ON A DEAD CHERRY TREE (Conversations with Stick Series #17)

…then the dead cherry beside the porch fills with birds.*


A DIALOGUE ON A DEAD CHERRY TREE


“They also serve who stand and wait.”
Remember that line? Was it Milton, Stick?

Huh? Where’s the waiter? Who’s serving?

Look at that dead cherry tree. Who would
think the birds would prefer to perch there?

With this gust, no leaves will slap them!

Small consolation, but you might be right,
With perfect foliage, the tree sways faster.

A wind punch is not as hard on a dead branch.

Oh, what I’d forgive for the sight of a tree
With these birds for leaves! But when the
Wind breaks the tree, won’t they simply fly?

It’s the first time you said I’m right, milord.

You’re a dead branch yourself, dear Stick.
Look how I lean on you, each step I take.


—Albert B. Casuga
06-30-11


*Prompt: From The Mornng Porch by Dave Bonta, 06-29-11.

ONCE UPON A TIME

ONCE UPON A TIME

From the beginning, years/have been love letters/to things that disappear/and remain. --- From “Two Thousand and….” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, o6-28-11 

Once upon a time: is a slumber line if any,

unlike lullabies that now use the F word.* 

Once upon a time: was a trigger to fantasy

about frogs and princes, fairies and trolls. 

“Once upon a time” has yet to be edited

out of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Bellows. 

Once upon a time: that, too, has come back

to all our versions of the incarnated Word. 

Once upon a time the world was simpler

than we know. That was once upon a time. 

But our milestones were once upon a time

marks of how far we have rolled millstones 

farther away from what once upon a time

were the jumping cliffs of self-immolation. 

We will move on, but leave our footprints

where we were happy once upon a time. 

---Albert B. Casuga

06-28-11

*Have you come across Samuel Jackson’s reading of “Go the F*** to Sleep! “? Google it. It has broken You Tube hit records. In our time.

AN UNHEARD SOUND

What sound is made/when something slips away and the hand closes/and opens on nothing but cool air in its wake? /…That’s/the heart missing what it wants to hold fast.---From “Aubade” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 06-27-11

AN UNHEARD SOUND

She got curious about palmistry once:

I wagered she could not read my palms.

How much time will I have? Life line.

How much time do we have? Heart line.

How long will I hold on to my mind? 

All of the lines end inside my open palm,

they have no story to tell. She dropped

my limp hand on her lap and said: You

are right, I could not read it. Could not?

Would not? Palm readers often clam up. 

They would rather keep the dark where

they belong: inside bottomless darkness.

At sundown, on my hammock hour, I

look at my palms again, peer at them

against the waning glow. Did she know? 

I open and close them wondering

what sound they would make if they

could, and quickly learn that old fingers

crackle then release weakly into open

palms, like a flower, or a needy heart: 

I close them tightly now upon my chest

and pray that I could hold on fast

to even these leftover remembrances

now slipping through my flaccid fingers

like sand, like love when I was not looking.

---Albert B. Casuga

06-28-11

AN UNCOMMON SENSE

Photo by Bobby Ong, Jr.

That humans need time, and the senses/with which to paddle through it/and navigate, and to get lost in the water’s/response as we push and kick.---From “Making Sense” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist.

 

AN UNCOMMON SENSE

It was a Rational Psychology 101 lecture,

and half of us were half asleep. De rigueur: 

Half of what I now recall about nothing

is that there is nothing in the mind  

that does not first exist in the senses.

Common sense.  Except that it is uncommon. 

Is it not special to find that goose pimples

are but the tell-tale signs of being touched? 

That time, you caressed my face when you saw

those letters I cut into that hapless branch. 

You did not need to say anything: your heart

did as it skipped a beat, my head on your chest. 

“Con amor duradero*,” completed the carving.

Your mute kiss said:  forever. I said: always. 

Would our eyes have seen that same eternity

if they were all that we had to have and to hold? 

On sundowns like this, on my hammock hour,

I look back to those lost years, bleary eyed. 

My mind was right. Nothing lives forever.

Are our lives all a lump of dearly felt lies then? 

What we felt then die, and are strewn like limp

clocks in a Dali landscape, despite memories? 

Yet, during these precious hammock hours,

I’d rather have seen, felt, caressed, and kissed 

Every undulant shadow before me, danced

that light fandango with them, talked to them 

even if they did not hear me nor care to hold

me, until I fall asleep muttering still: Forever. 

---Albert B. Casuga

06-27-11 

_________

*With lasting love.

http://thestorialist.blogspot.com/2011/06/
06-20-11

HOME HUNTING

HOME HUNTING

Lush hedges, iron gates, beveled glass doors,
patio doors opening to a river view of birds
on the wing and gardenia petals wafted
into rooms where there is no one there:

I was looking for a home. This is a house.

All it would have taken were those dancing
figures, reflections on smudged chromes,
the frolic of rolling oranges on speckled tiles,
kitchens redolent with burning bagels,
and those sounds we cuddle by as rain
patters like little feet on windows we will
look out of waiting for the peal of children
running naked through the rain.


—Albert B. Casuga
06-26-11

Prompt: "No one lists these other views:" From Luisa Igloria's "Listings", Via Negativa, 06-25-11, http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/06/listings.html

ANOTHER GIFT OUTRIGHT

One of the day's pleasant surprises was an e-mail from my son attaching an "ace" composition by his second child, his only girl, Megan Sarah Casuga, who is finishing her sixth grade this June at the St. Dunstan Elementary School, here in Mississauga. An essay on the Crucifixion of Jesus, the brief narrative/descriptive essay delighted me no end. From a sixth grader, it was a better written material than some of those submitted by my university students.

Here's my fifth grandchild (of the present 9, soon to be 10 some September), Megan, writing about Christendom's holiest event in a palpably anguished but quiet elegance befitting the solemnity of the Crucifixion. Not a word wasted. The narration is served graphically by descriptive words and phrases.

A little while ago, when she was barely five, I remember bringing her to weekly art classes at one of this city's community centers. She can draw and paint. I did not suspect that one day, without my mentoring, she would also add writing to her treasure chest of talents. Writing with aplomb. I cannot fully claim the gene-pool since her father, my only son. Albert Beau, writes and etches himself. Of course, I include myself in that area of "responsibility". Indeed, "the apple did not fall far from the tree."

Avoiding any close analysis or critique, I am posting her composition below. I invite all readers to make a judgment on how well her narrative/descriptive essay was written. I am, of course, proud to say, I have another literary creature climbing the ladder in the family tree.

In an earlier blog post, I called the poem collection (a chapbook entitled Young Poems) of another grandchild, Taylor C. Kwan, a 7th Grader at St. Valentines Elementary School and Megan's best friend, a "gift outright". Here's another "gift outright" from provident hands, and I am not sure I can thank them enough.

Everything is silent. You can only hear the faint sound of crying. You can hear people praying for forgiveness. The air is filled with sorrow. He is dead. Jesus is crucified.            

When you look back you can see him struggling to carry the cross. Falling again and again. People screaming and crying out. He is in pain yet no one helps. The guards scream at him to move on. He knows he has to do this so he moves onwards. He is coming closer and closer to his death.

All you can hear is the loud pounding nailing him to the cross. Again and again. Jesus has to be brave. Giant storms are cast. Lighting and thunder fill the sky. Rain pounds down. He asks his father to forgive the people. He is calm even though all around him is pain. A tear rolls downs his mother’s cheek as she asked God why? It becomes louder and louder until you can no longer bear to look. He looks up and says his last words. Then… silence.

UNCERTAIN WEATHER

.

UNCERTAIN WEATHER

“We have known them all already,
known them all”. Thus, we measure lives,
abandoned hopes, laments, even sighs.

We have heard them all already,
the prayers that remain unanswered
behind bolted doors, darkened rooms.

This anguish over being here and not
here is all too familiar, but like innocent
children, we still look toward times

when we eagerly open holiday boxes
and find surprises no longer there,
but manage to smile anyway, bottle up

a “No thank you,” and move on to other
boxes, only to find feigned familiar
joy that those are still the wanted toys.

Like uncertain weather marked in the sky,
we move on, unchartered, with the flux,
like all things plotted begin then end.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-23-11

Prompt: Like the sky that’s often mistaken for weather;/ and the world beneath it going where it goes. ---From “Familiar” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 06-23-11, http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/06/

A DIALOGUE ON RAIN DANCES AND MOSS (Conversations with Stick Series #16)

A DIALOGUE ON RAIN DANCES AND MOSS

We even have rain dances, Stick, to pray for rain.
But we still have our little deserts despite that.

The Hopi have it, the Navajo, the Igolots. The lot.
Mayans, Aztecs, and all the prayers they have got.

In the old country, tots still sing that song while
they halloo in the rain, bathing naked in the rain.

“I’m singing in the rain, just singing in the rain.
I’m happy in the rain, just happy in the rain…”

Why can’t I recall those Gene Kelly lyrics? Dang!
Oh, to feel that downpour on my face again!

In Ranchipur, they un-learned rain-prayers.
Monsoon scares even the farmers and fishermen.

Grade schoolers have even learned another ditty:
“Rain, Rain, go away, come again another day.”

Schoolhouses float in floods brought by monsoon
rains from Indonesia to China. Now Australia.

It’s summer at last, but does it have to be humid?
Poor chap over there has a dour face. He gazes

at his garden, at the portion given to all that moss,
looks back at stunted buds on his rotting trellises.

Like a sad farmer who has lost a crop. Like a sad
father who needed the money to send a kid to school.

“Into each life, some rain must fall…a rolling stone
gathers no moss,” my roused errant friend snapped.

Tracing a searing Gobi in that man’s countenance,
I grabbed its scruff and mumbled: Shut up, Stick!

—Albert B. Casuga
06-22-11

Prompt: The steady rain of 6 a.m. gives way to sticky heat by 10. I stand gazing like a sad father at the portion of my garden given over to moss.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 06-22-11 http://www.morningporch.com/2011/06/

THE IMAGE ON THE MIRROR

THE IMAGE ON THE MIRROR

Sit. Feast on your life.

---From “Love After Love”, Derek Walcott

Although this invitation will prolong our wait

in the cold antechambers that we surround

ourselves with, we will cautiously accept it. 

Why not? Sitting here, staring at a kaleidoscope

of the many faces we have constructed to meet

other faces, I celebrate a love affair with myself. 

Who else will do that for me? There were lovers,

and there were lovers, but they held on to their

own chisels to pare and scrape their own image 

of what they could have and hold not unlike

a wild-eyed Pygmalion sculpting flesh onto his one

desire, a Galatea of his rawest wants and dreams. 

I will sit and wait for the feast of all feasts

to be served on my table, my head on a platter,

my heart seasoning a bowl of hope, a soupçon 

of little mercies that lovers often do: a salving

of hurts, a troth of endless fealty, a promise

that the image on the mirror is finally, only mine.  

---Albert B. Casuga

06-21-11

  

A DIALOGUE ON CIRCLES (Conversations with Stick Series #15)

A DIALOGUE ON CIRCLES

A quid pro quo, if there is one, Stick.
One act of kindness has its other side
on the same coin: that spider would
come down the drain and mangle
some parts, but for this ushering.
Foraging, the woodchuck is startled out
of its thicket and barrels through but
also releases the grass from its burden
of rain and it springs up to sunshine
and softens the craggy valley with
green blades cutting through earth.

Huh? What squid? What pro?
Shut up, Stick. It’s the circle of life.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-21-11

Prompt: Ushering an enormous wolf spider outside, I disturb a baby woodchuck. Grass blades weighed down by rain spring up as it barrels through.---Dave Bonta,  The Morning Porch, 06-1-11

A DAILOGUE ON IMMORTALITY (Conversations with Stick Series #14)

A DIALOGUE ON IMMORTALITY


You know, milord, that guy who wrote:
“…And Death shall have no dominion,”
he’s wrong. Terribly. Look at these lilacs
crushed by a fallen dead elm branch.
Even in death, it destroyed the beautiful!

Shut, up, Stick. A little learning is a
dangerous thing. The poet said: “Death,
where is thy sting?” Leave me with my
tea, will you? I need it hot this morning.
Look, Stick, a phoebe uses it as a perch.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-20-11

Prompt: Gone for just two days, I come home to find half the lilac crushed by a fallen limb from the dead elm. A phoebe already uses it as a perch.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 06-20-11
http://www.morningporch.com/2011/06/

RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU

RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU

The space cleared/is bigger than they were/...as the maker of the snow angel/ once they get up from the ground.---From “Personal Space” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 06-14-11 *

I thought it was the other way around:

When one is no longer there, he will be

bigger than the space he occupied.  I

cannot begin to gather the memories

grown rampant of those I have loved

and lost, they will fill my days to the brim. 

How can I run with my father through

those fields with a wayward kite? How

can  I sing those goodbye songs in my

abuela’s tremulous voice? Will I keep

in tempo with grandfather’s steps when

I find myself walking up the winding

stairwells, my little palms in his hands? 

Will I tell those tales of enchanted

elves and flirting fairies as animatedly

as grandmother Teodora , and hold

my own grandchildren in thrall? How

large a space must I have to grow with

them  while I keep this quiet watch over

the rhythm of days as we bravely wait? 

I will not be able to fill these spaces you

have carved yourselves when you were

here---they overwhelm me with grandeur.

How will I cope with the largeness of your

presence now that you have gone from us?

Like the lad who threw himself on the snow

to create his winged likeness, I find my

snow angel  larger than I am achingly small

engulfed by lingering memories of your

abiding love and immeasurable greatness.

---Albert B. Casuga

06-17-11

* http://thestorialist.blogspot.com/2011/06/personal-space.html

FORECASTS

FORECASTS

I wake up mornings now counting
what’s left of my constancies, like coins
in a child’s piggybank. That everything
is in a constant flux is itself constant.
But I stay grateful for the same sun
rising over the mountain ridge at cockcrow.
At sundown, I chirp with the swallows
as they perch to wait for that same sun.
My yesterdays and tomorrows are twin
pictures of what was and will be or might
have been, like the ebb tide that will still
be there erasing footprints left on the sand.
Will there be old footprints there again?
It is a rhythm of a quiet watch over how
soon the death we have been born with
will pay its final visit. Quite like a cricket’s
chant describes the kind of day I’ll have,
after my tea, after all the teas of my life.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-17-11

Prompt: At 8:47, the sun puts in its first appearance. The cricket in my garden—the only weather forecast I follow—doesn’t miss a beat.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 06-17-11 http://www.morningporch.com/2011/06/

A DIALOGUE ON A QUARRY (Conversations with Stick Series #13)

A DIALOGUE ON A QUARRY

It is a Ground Zero thing, Stick; no one talks about it now
except the minute men, make that capitals: M & M.

No, not those candies, silly. But never mind. That blast
could have been heard around the world if it were there.

Wall (Money) Street, the United (Debating) Nations,
Greenwich Village, Chinatown, the Nooyawktimes,

the Clinton Bronx, ad misericordiam. What would
America be minus them? But,  pray,  not Hollywood!

Oh, we “will bear any burden, oppose any foe…”*
It’s why we have footprints on the moon, the Internet,

Google, Facebook, and Yahoo! and Lord, the CIA.
What would this planet be without these amber waves

of grain? This land of the brave, this home of the free?
I say, Stick, that’s one too many blasts from two miles

away. Praise Yahweh! But that must be the quarry boys
down there, blasting the minerals out, fossil for our Fords,

and gold. Elsewhere, my errant friend, when downstream
natives in the Philippines hear a blast one too many, they

will hasten with their basins to sieve the golden morsels
downriver, as they did in Ye Old Yukon north of the border.

And in old Benguet, in the boondocks of the Flip’s Mountain
Provinces, in the Itogon mines. Saturday nights in the grills

of Baguio City, that pinetree haven of my youth and undying
affection: all suborned by the American presence. Bullions.

Sinatra asked once in that song: What is America to me?
An M & M neighbour (shhh…) said: Dang! A land of the free!

Beware the wrath of the little citizen in Plummer’s Hollow:
he says: never again; his Hispanic brother: Nunca jamas!

Never again will American blood be shed in American soil!
Stick, aroused from stupor asked: Where then, milord?

Where? I gulped down my cup of cold tea—Nestea?—and
spat it out. Shut up, Stick, geopolitics on this porch is risky.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-16-11

*John F. Kennedy Inaugural Speech excerpt.

Prompt: A loud blast from the quarry two miles away: the kind of literal “terrorist attack on American soil” nobody but the neighbors ever mentions.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 06-16-11

SURFACING (Ars Poetica Series #2)

SURFACING
(An Ars Poetica)

Surfacing. We allow ourselves this one
salving act when every balm fails.

Bobbing up for air where it is rare,
we pray that this will hold long enough.

Enough for the moments at dusk when
we must dive again, submerge again,

into depths we know will one day hold us
down, and remain there to mend hurts

that in those magical spaces become
like pearls: prickly cutting dirt engulfed

into bivalved flesh that may in turn
become a magical gem from the agony.

Surfacing, we find ourselves some river
stream to rest with the rolling river stones.

Surfacing, we know we must go back
to the darkened depths, and like oysters

bear the pain cutting through our flesh
that we may surface soon with a new pearl.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-16-11

Prompt: The river stones lie quietly under water:/not quite weightless but small/ enough to turn and bevel at the edges.---From “Chaplet” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 06-16-11
http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/06/