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:
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.
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