RHYTHMS AT SUNDOWN

RHYTHMS AT SUNDOWN

On my hammock, on afternoons like this,
I have the whole sky for a taut canvas.

It is easy enough to paint a landscape
rolling on clouds that transform quickly.

That mass of cumulus moving toward
the hillocks of Nara is my father’s face.

I can see my Chloe in a furious pirouette
among those swirling cirrus. A ballerina.

Are clouds the sum of all our memories?
Do they shape the fears that we run from?

Or have I just run aground, no wind
on my sail, no seascapes nor harbours?

On afternoons like this, on my hammock,
I cull the pictures I have collected, a collage

of dispersing dwindling drawings on skies
that darken at sundown drowning them all.

What have I rushed for, hieing to a country
of old men? These are empty spaces of empty

hours, a dull ache that stands for a leftover life
marking rhythms of time on a swaying hammock.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-15-11

Prompt: Now /I try to learn the gold-slow rhythms of afternoons,/ the thrift of hours from the longer bones of time.---From “Anniversary” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 06-14-11 http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/06/