COLD MORNING TEA

COLD MORNING TEA

The golden light glistening on a black birch
tells it all. How glorious can that summer sheen
be, seen against the mottled birch branches?

How crisply clear could a day be when cackles
of hungry fledgling crows remain unanswered?
Is it the aborted cry that restores a morning calm?

Have all the querulous puling benumbed this
valley into a lull not unlike that of a dead day’s
silence? Let them beg all they want. Let them cry.

Does anyone hear the starving orphan’s plea
cutting through these barriers of pine and poplar?
Do we hear them still erupting from Haiti’s debris?

Are there cankered mouths in Ethiopia waiting
for morsel? Can anyone locate the burnt slums
now floating with lilies and dog’s carrion in floods

all over the earth, from Manila to Missouri, from
China to India, from Brazil to temblor-struck Chile?
Do we still remember the children of New Orleans?

Their cri d’coeur have not stopped, but the crows
have ceased. I notice the bright day break through
the swaying willow trees, but my morning tea is cold.

—Albert B. Casuga
07-06-11


Prompt: Only when the begging cries of the crow fledglings finally cease do I notice the air’s clarity, golden light glistening on a black birch. ---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 07-06-11