FEELING FANCY FREE: A LOVE POEM THAT COULD NOT WAIT

 

FEELING FANCY FREE: A LOVE POEM

THAT COULD NOT WAIT

There is nothing but trees for miles from where Allen and Margaret Berrington’s silver Chrysler Sebring was found on Wednesday afternoon. . . .A pair of dirtbikers found the Sebring, out of gas, and Margaret, 91, deceased, three kilometres down the road. . . .Mounties later found the body of Allen, 90, nearby, concealed by a small embankment. How they got there, and why, is a mystery. - - - Kevin Libin, National Post, Friday, June 4, 2010

 

 

 

Something about the spring sun slicing through
Shadows of maple and birches cuddling the road,
Their branches creaking like stretched backs do
When pulled erect from a burden of stoop, load
Of the years fallen off as derelict leaves gone
With the lashing wind, roiled into an uproar
Of rain and foliage --- something about the sun
Caught in her ruddy blush and now gossamer hair
Has sprung a sprightly pull on his flaccid arms
And he was going to enfold her again, trolling
Their road song again: O leggy Peggy in my arms,
O lovely Peggy in my arms! And hear her trilling
Again: Al of my dreams, I love you, honest I do;
Oh, what can I do, I love you so. I love you so.
But something about the spring sun on their faces
Was all he could recall, the sky, and empty spaces.

 

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

HIS FIRST DRINK

 

 

HIS FIRST DRINK

 

What is it about gloom and an overcast sky

that calls back from buried remembrances

shadows of a discarded past folded like linen

tacked neatly into closets, camphorated, and

forgotten in dark attics until the next funeral?

Small consolation that these leaves transform

into a bravura of rainbow colours before fall

claims them from their trembling branches.

Blown off with the winds to places unknown,

would anyone recall how they sheltered birds,

worms, held nests in the fork of twigs, even

wayward kites? A fanfare of cricket songs,

however cacophonic, forms part of a memory

when even the bark of a whimpering mongrel

or the monotone of a midnight owl remind

us of walks in the dark trying to get home on a

drunken tune whistled and yelled to the moon:

“I got a little drink, it went to my head. Show

me the way to go home! I did not get there.

 

--- Albert B. Casuga

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)

BOTTOMS OF TROUSERS ROLLED: FIVE POEMS TO GROW OLD BY

BOTTOMS OF TROUSERS ROLLED: FIVE POEMS

 

 

Here, read these to grow old by. You’ll understand why. ---Note to a Friend Turning 80

CUP ON THE BENCH

“Favorite spot,” Nguyen Cao Tran pointed
To the bench on Lincoln Green before
He waved me bonjour the Montreal way.

“Favorite spot for wife and me…drink
Tim Horton Coffee from across,” he winked,
Now unafraid his accent might betray

A Viet Minh rasp from Saigon days,
A shrapnel buried on his nape: “Still smoke
Camel sticks from GI Joe friend in Frisco.”

He looked away when I remembered to ask
About Nguyen Bao. “Isn’t she walking
With you this morning? It’s spring, mon vieux!

He mumbled: “She gone…far away now,”
And shuffled away, his knapsack slung
Like a rifle crooked on his flaccid hand.

A single cup of Roll-up-the-Rim teetered
On the bench the next day while I waited.
No cups on the ground, the bench was naked.



LUCY DOES NOT LIVE HERE ANYMORE

Caminnare. Fare una passeggiata.
Eh, come stai? She shot back looking askance.
Perched birdlike on her stroller, she inched
Her way to the middle of the cul de sac ---

Where I tarried, a wide wave our ritual,
I called out, Come va, Nonna?
Her andador tilted off the cobbled strada,
She stared blankly, but smiled nonetheless
In the courtly manner she never failed to show
To neighbours and strangers alike.

Her sallow skin becomes her regal face,
I thought, but the same face furrowed,
Her eyebrows arched impatiently then;
She demanded: Are you the police?
Or are you my son with a Florida tan
Hiding as usual from me? I called them
From 2441 because I could not find
My house, nor my keys. Was just walking,
Was just enjoying the sun for once.
Crazy Calabria weather. Rain. Sun. Wind.
Sun. Snow. Cold. Hot. Aiee... who are you?

“2441 is your house, Nonna. And you have
A daughter who will be here tomorrow.
And this is Mississauga. I am Alberto
With the nipotes Chloe, Louie, Marie at 2330.”

Aieee...dolce angelo! My angels.
How are they? E come va, amore mio?
Caminare. Fare una passeggiata.
O, come bello, O sole bello!
But you will help me find my home,
Won’t you? Won’t you? Amore?
A lilt on her voice, she flirted rather coyly.

 
WINDOW GAZERS

Sitting on her Florentine chair
Atop the red-tiled stairs, the sirocco
Breeze playing with her ivory hair,
She awaits her turn to say hello:
A caudillo-like half-raised wave
And a schoolmarm’s smile on her
Waxen face, a smirk at times to save
Her some chagrin falling off a chair
While she wags childlike to say:

“Blow a kiss to your window-waving
Girl, say au revoir for now, and pray
That as they grow, won’t stop loving,
And they do grow and go away,
And you’d be left sitting on a chair
Wondering why they have flown
Like swallows, and hope would care
To come back and perch at sundown.”


EL NIDO DESOLADO

(Para mi Madre)

Los pajaritos están dejando su nido;
el invierno de su vida ha venido
tan muy temprano!

Mira! Mira! Madre mía.

Tan fuerte ahora, sus pájaros
están volando a puertas desconocidas;
están volando tan lejos para que
nunca jamás devolver y quedar en la casa
de corazón triste, ahora casa abandonada,
nida desolada, madre mía.

O mi madre querida!


OMNI SOLI SEMPER

“I just wish your Father would come and take me soon. I am tired,” Mother said and closed her eyes. --- From a Visit to Poro Point, Writer’s Notebook, 2009


The flannel blanket was an armour:
it shielded me through nights I needed you
to defend me against the onslaught of day
when I had to rise to know
that the children were all in bed last night
dreaming their dreams or fleeing nightmares
where flailing they fall from precipices
and you were no longer there to catch them
nor were they there to fall in your arms.

Even the sunrise assails me.

I beg for sunsets now and nights to hide me
from the rush of day when finally I ache to see
them home and you beside me asking
how I made it through my day.

When will you come to take me home?

The flannels have shrunk and, threadbare,
They could no longer keep the intruding light away.


---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

THE WHIMPER AFTER: A FUGUE

THE WHIMPER AFTER: A FUGUE

 

This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper. ---From “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot

 HER LONGING

After after, is there anything or anyone left

to sing the hammock songs? After after,

will you still be there waiting, a warm blanket

in your hands, to throw the flannel on my lap,

lest I drool myself to a sundown slumber

and promptly forget it gets cold in the winter?

Aiee, amor mio, despues de nuestros amores,*

when love is gone, after all the countless days,

where shall we find that place called after?

If it is lost, too, might there be some other?
 

HIS SILENCE

By sundown, they will be gone, like long shadows

on my porch walls. All the fierce singing done,
what remains is the quiet murmur of the bourn.
Its stream will not return, nor will the swallows.

But while they flitted from tree tops to broken

perches, did they not cry out their bravest songs?
These are our elm trees, these are our willows,
we pieced our homes here together, we roosted.

At the bluffs, we find the edge of the woods muted

now. Soon, even the cackling gulls will dive a final
swoon, catch the last crayfish lost on boulders left
bare by ebbing tide that must also leave its shore.

It is troths like these that will not last, nothing

endures. The silence can only become a whimper.
 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

*O, my love, after all our loving…

UNCERTAIN WEATHER

 

UNCERTAIN WEATHER

“We have known them all already,
known them all”. Thus, we measure lives,
abandoned hopes, laments, even sighs.

We have heard them all already,
the prayers that remain unanswered
behind bolted doors, darkened rooms.

This anguish over being here and not
here is all too familiar, but like innocent
children, we still look toward times

when we eagerly open holiday boxes
and find surprises no longer there,
but manage to smile anyway, bottle up

a “No thank you,” and move on to other
boxes, only to find feigned familiar
joy that those are still the wanted toys.

Like uncertain weather marked in the sky,
we move on, unchartered, with the flux,
like all things plotted begin then end.

 

—Albert B. Casuga

 

SOLITUDE: LEFTOVERS ON HER TABLE

LEFTOVERS ON HER TABLE

 

I walk alone in its corridors,

like I am one of the planks,

clean, clear, but cold floors

stretched endlessly, blanks,

empty but will always be full

of the sounds of loneliness:

spoons and forks fall, their

clangour strangely cutting

through the night when

the dinner table is cleared

quietly away, the children

could not make it. Eating

leftovers just isn't the same

anymore, the leche flan still

golden, caramel and cream

browned on the edges will

harden overnight in a freezer

dear to them as “old geezer.”

Morning tea on a bare porch

is absently left to cool off

in a squat cup left untouched

on a receiving table now left

trembling from traffic fare

on the rousing old highway.

Maybe they will call today,

maybe they will still see me

after turkey day. Christmas!

O, will they be here at last?

The cup tinkles, I look away,

a twig has fallen into my cold tea.

---Albert B. Casuga

 

Poems on Loss Series: Separations, deaths, loss of precious allegiances, defeats---they excite deeply-rooted emotions that stimulate the creative process---let's define them in poetic contexts and hope to find what riveting realities abide in them. Why do they linger? What for? I vaguely recall the Bard's line: "when in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state...". Let's go into these.

SOMETHING ABOUT PICKING UP RAGDOLLS

Poems of Loss Series #3: There are other love poems that speak of pain and longing, of regret and fear, of failure to sustain the happiness that one must give to loved ones, like children who are left to cry themselves to sleep, forever hoping their absentee parents would soon come home with the day's surprises and goodies to reward good little boys and girls. Night falls. Father has not come home. Mother has gone elsewhere in pursuit of her own dreams.

 Drawing by A. B. Casuga, 1990 

 

SOMETHING ABOUT PICKING UP RAGDOLLS

“Hijo, como estas haciendo con mis nietas y nieto mientras su mujer desgraciada esta viviendo una vida loca? Aiee, santisima, hijo. Ven aqui. Regresas a San Fernando, para puedo ayudarte con sus ninas y unico hijo.---Old Letter Found in a Garbage Recycling Box

Something about picking up ragdolls and cans
graffitied on one’s conscience in silent rooms
built to peek slowly into coincides with the loss
of verb in one’s speech: no amity here between
this ministry and that menagerie.

Evening brings a pack of censure for the father
who, leaving, pledged the carnage of the baker’s
best and Andersen’s hoary hairy fairy tales,
arriving,  plods through debris of waiting --
(arm-less d-o-l-l-s, paperrrrripped dolls,
paper ships, paper planes, paper hats, paper…),
forgetting, now mournfully remembers:
“Candy stores are closed along the way home.”

Silent rooms are built to peek slowly into
because fathers have given up looking
into daughters’ eyes form tears, arguing
the relevance of waiting when all the piper has
is a paper bag of music and a pack of metaphors.
(“You know, only children recall the Deluge?”)
The evening sees the piper leading the (mass)
mice and piper (pauper) drowning.

Fathers plod through debris of waiting
and have learned in turn to pray.*

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

*Revised version of the poem of the same title posted in my literary blog April, 2009.

DO NOT DISTURB

 

 

 

DO NOT DISTURB

You are noisy/ even when you are silent, / the world is dripping with/ Do Not Disturb signs in/ languages we don’t even/ recognize as languages. --- From “On Eggshells” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 01-03-12 

It is easy enough to hear silence

at the edge of the woods. It is loud.

Your pounding heart is not there

beating sense into your dulled mind.

They just jump out like shadows

on walls, turn their backs, ignore us.

On its own, one whines with longings

struggling to spill out, uncorked,

from unguarded gaols of feelings

that have lain fallow, rotten carrion

of desire tardily unbound, love gone

still, a truant finally nailed dead

on broken beds creaking under cold

sheets that will never find heat again.

The other, a slug of a mind, stays mute,

until it is egged on to scream out a pain

in its pure form: a memory of loss,

a raw betrayal of troth. Cut, cut clean.

Out of the woods, on his way home,

it was easy to read on the locked cottage

door an absent sign: Do not disturb.

Silence has its sharp language. It is clear.

 

--- Albert B. Casuga

A MUD DANCE DIALOGUE

Love Poem Series #10. This is it. The last of the love poems. Is love most nearly itself when it ceases to matter? T. S. Eliot asked that in one of his poems. I’d say yes, and rush to hide.

 

A MUD DANCE DIALOGUE

 

How about we try for some joy?—From “In a Hotel Lobby, Near Midnight”, Luisa A. Igloria

 

Mud as fire extinguisher? Bloody overkill, I say.
Douse it with a spit of brandy and gin chaser,
and off to a cabin at the edge of the woods! Huh.

“How about we try some joy”? A blowhard’s line.
How about a walk in the woods, mud and all,
and answer old questions left unanswered:

Is love most nearly itself when it ceases to matter?
What is need that it remains unsatiated, unmet,
when lovers seek ardour to brim beyond fulfillment?

Ah, let’s slosh away in the mud where mud is,
and we might yet find a balm for this burning ember
we carry around like raw marks singed in our palms.

What joy is there where union is not communion?
What need is there for glowing embers flaming out
of buckets? I would rather we danced in this muck

of mud and find our freed fears become the dance,
our only dance, before the stroke of midnight,
before the convulsions of laughter turn to pain.

—Albert B. Casuga