A WAITING GAME

 

 

A WAITING GAME

 

Looking for a good time to stop,

is to stop looking like slumping

on a fallen trunk or a trail rock

jagged and jutting out of the bluff.  

Morning walks get longer along

empty spaces before familiar curbs

signal a turn to what we wait for:

the final bend. We are back home. 

“HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME.

Now Albert is coming back,

make yourself a bit smart.”* Eliot,

of course, said it for me earlier.  

How long ago was that, when I

read those Wasteland lines? How

long have I waited to use them?

Is this a good time, yet? I waited. 

Because we have seen the clues,

because we have seen them all

already, I feel it is time to stop

waiting, sum up the bill, and go. 

What was I given to bear the pain

of knowing that I did not know?

Or build a home I could not live in?

What tools must I now return?  

In summing up, I will discount this,

in the game of haggling for a place

back in the Garden. Our stay here

was overpaid. We waited too long  

for that room with a better view,

that terrace with a canopy of roses,

and blue birds trilling on the sill.

O, for a touch of that distant sky!  

Next time around, if there is one,

I will be smart. I will settle only for

a room where I could see the sky

and the sea conspire to eat the sun.

 

---Albert B. Casuga

 

* T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland, II. A Chess Game, T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950)

 

 

Ambit's Gambit (A. B. Casuga Litblog): GROWING AWAY

Ambit's Gambit (A. B. Casuga Litblog): GROWING AWAY

COME AWAY: THREE POEMS

 

 

COME AWAY: THREE POEMS*

 

1. Away

 

It does haunt one’s reverie

like an old melody’s refrain,

it is a way but not away. But

where is away? A memory,

perchance a lingering pain? 

Distance-given right to know

erases world’s away, rebuilds

them only as far as a pebble

skips and skims over eddies

on roiled water: See old faces? 

Etched on beach sand, away

is a heart pierced through

by an arrant arrow called Luv

and a spray of trickling angst

named Will or blood bubbles. 

Or a nodding gran chanting

on her beads wishing shadows

on her walls at sundown might

jump out where they grow tall

and call out: Granny, I’m back!  

Maybe an unreachable land,

then, endlessly dark, no sun

creating rainbows, no showers

lads and lasses run through

naked and free, cold but happy.

 

2. Monologues 

When are you coming back

from the front, son? Sometime

soon, before mom fades away?

Where is this Viet Nam? Iraq?

Afghanistan, Pakistan? Somalia?  

Will you take the midnight train,

Betty, and be home Christmas?

Me and the gang, we will throw

a party at the Metro, wait for you,

gulp suds for every train whistle.

I guess he will not be around

for my umpteenth birthday, mom.

You invited him, did you not, he

and that woman in Denver? I

just have to wait by the window.  

Is grandpa going fishing with me?

Like last summer, he will drive in

on his old Studebaker, clanking

with a loose tail pipe over cobbles

on our street. Will he? Won’t he? 

I will not be away for a long time,

not too long. Before you know it,

some 10,000 sleeps from now, we

will be bowling again in St. Peter’s

Alley, cracking lightning and thunder.

 

3. Overture 

Come away then, come away, while

we can, let’s run through valleys,

swim the rivers with the catfish,

slalom down those snowbound hills.

Come away, Love, to some place away. 

 

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

* The poems above were prompted by lines from Hannah Stephenson’s “Away”. Throw it away, / we say, but where/ does this directive/ lead. Where is/ away. We know it/ suggests distance/ and removal, that/ the thrown thing/is no longer visible/ or retrievable. --- From “Away” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 1—20-11