HER SILENCE

HER SILENCE

Too many times like passing ships, at both ends of missed/opportunities. Why can’t we touch at the center, in silence?---From “Ghazal of Unattainable Silence” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 08-17-11

Her stony silence was her bullwhip,

she did not have to raise her raspy

voice to make us fall in line and freeze

if that were what hell was made of. 

Her eyes fixed at a shadowy distance,

she would not bother to look our way.

We always knew she had absconded

once again to a place we will not find. 

There are low zarguelas trees there,

their fruit are within your easy reach.

Just stretch your hands as high as

you could toward the sky. Zarguelas! 

We would hide in the farm for days,

and you would cook rice cakes for us,

and pick green mangoes from the tallest

tree, and cut off pineapple eyes for me! 

I would look at you in silence for hours

and whisper how much I would lose

if you had gone away and not come home.

O, how my whole world would crumble! 

If she could lisp those words she wrote

him when he rushed off to that war none

of us would wish even on the slit-eyed

enemy, she would be singing them now. 

Abuela, tell us about that place where you

found him chopping wood for the vats

you brought to cook the sweetest rice cakes

to last you two a lifetime. Abuela, tell us. 

We fall silent at the hint of a smile on her

quivering lips that would have formed

his name who might have just passed by

on a cold breeze like a silent passing ship, 

to touch her back, her hair, her face---

but she looked away into that dark, distant

place uttering perhaps her fondest rebuke:

You are home! What took you so long?  

O, if only her silence were just the stillness

of a quiet memory. Not ceaseless mourning. 

---Albert B. Casuga

08-18-11