THE UNWRITTEN SONG

THE UNWRITTEN SONG

You are learning/ to call to what you love, to see it returning.---Hannah Stephenson, “You Can do It”, The Storialist, 12-07-11

When the going is good, I would like to go

quickly and quietly like the kettle’s whistle

at tea time, hunched over a writing desk

daring to write that still unwritten song: 

The one that gets arrested in my dry throat

when I sing you to sleep, and you could not

or would not, afraid you would find me gone

in the morning, like most mornings we had

before we grew too old to stay longer in bed,

snuggling, counting the rings on the phone

before the children, now the grandchildren,

would put the intruder down and wonder

how we are waddling along, bum knees on

your right and mine on the left. Would you

want us to buy your croissants today? What

about the bok choy, and the other greens? 

This is as good as it gets, cold keys to pound

on, little words, cathedrals of thought,

wind on the pane, a houseful of memories,

quiet pictures to talk to on the walls, tunes

tinkling on the piano sans rhyme or reason

except to dust the keys off from imagined

dirt stuck by sticky children’s fingers who

raid the shelves of uneaten brittle cookies

and marmalade. Aiee, cochino, por Dios!* 

She would wail in her pained stentorian

dirge, mourning over violated piano keys

that remain untouched, unplayed, silenced

perhaps when arthritic fingers coupled

rheumatic knees, backs that recall pangs

of Calvary, and those kaleidoscopic visions

of ghostly shadows peopling porch walls,

bouncing, dancing, trembling like puppets

on a string, undefined, indefinable, strangers

come to visit us, and we do not know their

names. When the going is good, I will go

quickly and quietly, humming that song

I said I will write for you before I go.


 

--- Albert B. Casuga

12-10-11

*God, how filthy!