TWO POEMS: YOU AND I and WHEN RAIN BEADS ROLL OFF LEAVES (05-20-11)

WHEN RAIN BEADS ROLL OFF LEAVES

If each of those fat beads of rain rolled off those leaves,
what would the bleeding-heart offer for weary eyes
in the morning when sunlit dewdrops sparkle? Leaves.

Each foliate sprout should be reason enough for being.
Each leaf will, in the height of seasons before a late fall,
be spun-over refuge of spiders stalking cocoons

erupting into preening papillons, or fountainheads
for termite and weevils, slalom pads for ants, ladybugs,
and sieves for trickling sap: a whole universe of use.

O, how quickly the magic of spring turns into dry days,
when we wonder where the wood thrushes have gone,
their trill drowned by the banshee wail of rustling foliage.

—Albert B. Casuga
05-20-11

Poetic Prompt:  "Each glaucous leaf of the bleeding-heart has rolled its rain in one ft bead. I'm wondering: where have all the wood thrushes gone?" ---Dave Bonta, Morning Porch, 05-20-11 http://www.morningporch.com/2011/05/

YOU AND I

Words in their primary or immediate signification stand for nothing, but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them. ---John Locke

Are you talking to me? Are you writing to me?

Answers to questions you pitch into the dark

are meanings I assign to the questions you ask. 

Always, you and I, will be at opposite ends

of a half-lit hallway where echoes are as urgent

as the tremulous confessions we burden ourselves 

with each time we look into our reflections

on the one-way mirrors we look into when hiding

hurts hurled like hunting knives at target trees. 

When I call you, I mean to quickly hold you down,

to find your voice, to shape your feelings, to own

your thoughts, to mould you as I want to have you. 

I interpret you through my own lenses and mirror

you as you would me and have our confluence

in this reflection, a dragging into a cold dungeon  

of thought constructing meaning instead of finding

it, and the “You” becomes the “I” held in bondage.

Except that in this conquest, I lose everything. 

Questions and answers become elusive phantoms
of meaning, configurations of troth to the other
turn into fantasy, dreams and desire but delusions.

---Albert B. Casuga

05-20-11

Poem Prompt: “You” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 05-18-11, http://www.vianegativa.us./2011/05/you/