GROW LIKE THE CREEK: THREE POEMS FOR LOUIS

GROW LIKE THE CREEK:

THREE POEMS FOR LOUIS

 

(For Louis Martin Casuga-Lalonde at Six)

 

1. Wiping Him Dry

 

Grow like the creek, as did this wisp of a boy

rising from the water, hallooing:

Look, abuelo, I can dive, I can swim!

He wiggled his salva vida floating to the edge,

his face toward the bright blue sky: I am good!

 

As all grandfathers would, I said: You are!

Oh, you are, my boy. And while I wipe you dry

after this dousing frolic, I run my hands over

your body, cleaning it of any tinge of dry clay,

loathe to think that if I were shaping you

from the mud East of Eden, I’d want you pure,

unalloyed, a cherubic imp of a teaser, a laughter

tickled out of a dream, a pure delight, and clean.

 

2. Like the River

 

Under his breath, he also lisped a wistful
plea to the walls around him or whoever
could hear an old man’s prayer:

Please, let him build them strong, and not
destroy; and for my nieto jovencito, to never
forget that there are grander castles in the air.
Please, let him grow like the creek,
when freed of silt will turn to clearest blue.
O, let him flow like the river and find his sea.

 

3. Yet Another Robot at Six

 

He would build them with empty soda cans,

recycled wire, parts unknown until they move.

Look, abuelo, a robot! Whence come this love

for all things foreign to this dotard askance

about why little lads like him would prattle

about apps and some such instead of apples?

 

He blew the candles on his pumpkin cake,

I bet he wished for yet another robot kit

and another program of games on his Ipad,

head bowed before yet another gizmo lit

on a screen, a praying stance for this lad

who would grow up, I bet, with his little head

a tad forward and leading him like earlier

kin in some stone age, a neo-Neanderthal,

peering at an Iphone, an Ipad. Nowhere else.

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

June 20, 2013. Mississauga

TREEHOUSE POEMS: PLANNING FOR A TREEHOUSE and MARIE IN THE TREEHOUSE

PLANNING FOR A TREEHOUSE

(Voices from Three Generations)

(For my Grandchildren)

1.

Come summer, we will build
another treehouse on an oak
overlooking the creek, there
is more of you now to gather
remnants we can put together.

Nothing bigger, but higher,

maybe closer to the clouds,
nearer to the stars, away from
the giggling girls next door.
We will see less of the world.

2.

Or more of it below: yelping
dogs lining up for the lift-leg
tree astride our river bank,
are easy slingshot targets off
stouter, steadier branches.

O, and there is soldier-boy

doing it with the wife round
the clock since he came back
wounded from Iraq, Libya,
and all on the eastern crack.

3.

Shush, buddyboy, that’s not
what treehouses are for. What
are they for, gramps? To espy
on sparrows, robins, jays, owls
talk to each other on sundowns.

 

So, if we build it a bit higher,
we can also build a treehouse
for God, can we not, gramps?
Why ever for, laddie? He is
everywhere. But nowhere near?

4.

Cool. A treehouse for God on
the river bend. Then, maybe,
just maybe, we can visit him
anytime, gramps, ask for help
for starving kids in Somalia.

Hook him up on a telephone

line, strings and cans and all,
and maybe Dad can provide
Him with a Bell Internet link,
alert Him on the Facebook!

5.

So he can stop all killings and all,
and punish priests who molest
altar boys and girls, and...Whoa!
Whoa, boys, we are building a
treehouse, not His jailhouse.

Could we build one for God,
anyway, gramps? We got boards
and plywood and shingles and
nails, and...borrow mom’s cross,
to protect Him in His treehouse.

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

MARIE IN THE TREEHOUSE

It was the prayer he chuckled about,

that he make it intact to the top
rung of the rickety ladder: writhe,
ride on the wind, old man, be stout
heart, bring her up to His little shop.

She let out a shriek of eager delight.

Abuelo with the creaking kneebone,
gramps of the war room treehouse,
catcher on base, top worrier on site,
cradled her, still as a graveyard stone.

A lass let loose in a toyland’s house,

she skipped and twirled and looked
around, her eyes darting from wall
to wrapping wall, wondering perhaps
what was grand about a dingy nook

emptied of a dollhouse.  Why crawl

through an elfin door, or bother at all?

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

DISCOMFITURE

 

 

DISCOMFITURE

 

Stay still, we ask/ our things, while we repurpose/ them. What we mean is stay, / still, we need a little longer.—From “Repurposed” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 11-22-11

 

Memories are needs reshaped as still points,

if they could just be pinned down to stay

whole before falling like shattered mirrors

that recompose as harlequins of fluid faces

struggling to remould beyond the shadows

and the strange masks that fears and dread

now wear as they strut about as tall desires

we pray would remain longer than a mirage

of remembrances perishing like the carrion

of dreams and endless longings to be here.

 

There are no signs nor arrows on this path

that could retrace those gentle and happy

days when we owned the place where we

could not get lost even if we heroically tried.

We mean to rename these streets and mark

them indelibly so we could come home again.

But those still points are never there nor still

when we need them steadier than chameleons

that we are born with, where our zero point

is neither water, nor dirt, nor fire, nor air.

 

--Albert B. Casuga

 

 

 

 

 

SENTRY

 

 

 

SENTRY

The stool
stood sentry
to a darkened room

where she said she
would wait
if it took forever,
and it did.

The stool will outlast
the stonewalls,
rotting doors,
loosened bricks, dust,
and bramble.
It will be there.

Waiting.

---Albert B. Casuga

TO BUILD HOMES OUT OF BOX HOUSES

 

 

TO BUILD HOMES OUT OF BOX HOUSES

(For Marie Clementine)

Something about boxes as make-believe houses

Define their stories of how they must grow away
To stay close, anchored like uncut umbilicus.

Always look homeward, lass, and you will stay

To listen to this old heart’s rhythm in tall tales
Of shadows dancing on the walls, a shadow play

As real as your play-sets, teacups, saucers, kettles

And cutlery, all faces of a vibrant dreamworld game
Where abuelo will always be the catcher of shells

And you the full-to-the-brim pitcher of warm joy

In a pretend abode as inchoate as these cardboard
Walls emptied of things grown-ups like for a toy

To build homes with, to brighten shelters with,

And think paper pillars are stronger than reed.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

06/14/13, Mississauga

 

ATOP A HILL OVERLOOKING THE SEA: TWO POEMS FOR MOTHER

ATOP A HILL OVERLOOKING THE SEA: TWO POEMS FOR MOTHER

 

1. AN UNCERTAIN QUIET

(For Mother*)

But there is silence now at the phoebe’s nest–-/ the fledglings have flown–-Icarus-like must test/ their wings against the sinews of a summer wind. / Is this uncertain quiet also an augury of mourning? ---From “Gone: A Weaning Song”, A. B. Casuga, 06-10-12

Is this uncertain quiet also an augury of mourning?
It is a cool, bright, and clear but silent morning,

what should move have not, even the gentle breeze
ruffling foliage rampant now on the crowns of trees

seemed to have gone still like the stale pool of mud
that must have caked in the warm night and seized

around the trunk clinging, child-like, on Mother’s
knee wailing: Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Please stay?

But she could not; she has waited for this clear day
to take a trip she must have wished for among others,

all dreams gone stale then, but she must go and meet
Father somehow where he has waited along a street

Where they were to see each other again on a cool day,
Eager to wrap each other in arms that pleaded: Stay!


---Albert B. Casuga


*Nenita Buenaventura Casuga, b. January 11, 1923 , d. June 11, 2012)+ R.I.P.

 

 

2. GRIEF: THE OTHER FORM

(Remembering Mother)


"Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form." ~ Rumi


Lo siento, mucho. I am sorry. Sympathies,
thoughts, and prayers.They are staple;
when the loss stings, these do salve pain.

But is sorrow eased somehow by these
when in the gloom, they are only able
to shape and reshape, as only niceties can,

into dread that they will not be there again
when mornings jolt the stricken and unable
into a stream of emptiness, a hollow niche

where totems people the blank memories
that must fill in the gaps like this candle
melts into a candelabra to hide what it can

about the abyss of oblivion, a gaping solace,
when the dead are interred in this dark place?


---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

THE CANON OF THE CIPHER: FOUR POEMS FOR FATHER

 

 

THE CANON OF THE CIPHER:

FOUR POEMS FOR FATHER

 (For Father, Francisco F. Casuga+)

 

I.  RETURNING TO THE ROOT

“Will courage Redeem stupidity?”

                                   -- Nick Joaquin

There is a manner of returning to the root

that explains the virtue of a hole,
its quietness the petering circle:
The canon of the cipher indicts us all.

And you, rocking yourself to an eddy,

drown the death wish: O that grief
on sons’ faces could tell you all.
“Will courage be visited upon my children?”

It is this cut whittles the tree down,

not of consumption but of fright
that bereaving is one’s splintering
of children’s bones. Death is our betrayal.

They are sons gaping as grandfathers die

shapes the gloom of the breaking circle.
They who knew the frenzy of the bloodcry

must never return to find sons become spittle.

1971

This was adjudged the Grand Prize Winner of the first Philippine national Parnasso Poetry Writing Contest (1971). A handsome trophy sculpted by noted Philippine sculptor Edwin Castrillo and a princely sum of a thousand pesos made me happy. Father must have returned the favour. But he was no longer around to applaud. I would not even have minded a slap on the nape. In Canada, it won the Mississauga Library System Annual Poetry Writing Contest in 1998, Adult Winner.

 

II. A SWIMMING LESSON

How much of those happy times

would you bring back, like the waves
ebb but must always rush back?

It is the sea that returns you intact

into my now empty days, windy days,
your laughter always a raw memory.

You threw me into those restless

waves, cried out a challenge: Swim!
Kick hard, swing your arms! Swim!

And I never stopped, not for hurts,

not for lost dreams, nor for losses.
You warned me never ever to cry.

11-03-11

*Culled from "Poesias Para Los Muertos" (11-01-11). I was not able to say goodbye to my Father when he passed away at the Bethany Hospital in San Fernando City, La Union Province, the Philippines. Just as well. He is still with me.
 

III. ONCE UPON A SUMMER SOLSTICE


There is a scampering of grace in the dry woods
and a pulse upon some soliloquy:
it is the rain come as a smooth and forbidding lace
upon the cup of the dead and dying weather.

It is past the season of the grub.
The flirt of the monsoon upon the arid lap of Nara
is caked on the thick napes of children
dancing naked in the mire of the fields,
gaping to catch the fingers of the rain,
slithering like parched serpents guzzling raindrops
cupped in the hollow of gnarled father’s palms.

There will be no songs, for the ritual is not of birth
but of death as summer dies in Nara
and with it every titter bursting from a child’s mouth.

The rain becomes a bloody plot.

June 2009

IV. DOWN THE SLOPE

Yet all the precedent is on my side:/I know that winter death has never tried/The earth but it has failed;.../It cannot check the peeper’s silver croak. --- Robert Frost, The Onset


I would run down the slope and catch myself
a rolling ball of snow before it falls into the ravine,
but walking through the silently falling snow
at the trail is a choice for these creaking knees---
no more gossoon games defying gravity for me
or flying off the hillside edge into fluff below
among the stiffened bramble and wild apple tree.

There’s warmth in the silence of falling snow:
I feel his gentle hands on my nape, I hear him,
I ask him if he would drink a pint with me
if I had reached beer-guzzling age before
he’d make his final trek, before he’d leave,
but I hear his whistling for the wind instead
and tug at his wayward kite now puncturing
some sombre summer sky in San Fernando.

O, how I’d run down the barren slopes to catch
his fallen kite among the burnt logs of the kaingin,*
but these are flakes I find myself catching
and whipped out twigs that break the silence
of falling snow. O my father.

__________

*Clearings made by burning forests


--- ALBERT B. CASUGA
2013, Mississauga. Canada

 

 In Memoriam: Francisco F. Casuga, b. January 9, 1921 -- d. December 5, 1975

EARTH POEMS AND THE WRATH OF DAYS

 

 

EARTH DAY POEMS AND THE WRATH OF DAYS

 by Albert B. Casuga

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,/ And life is too much like a pathless wood.../ I’d like to get away from earth a while/ And then come back to it and begin over.../...Earth’s the right place for love:/ I don’t know where it’s likely to go better. --- Robert Frost, Birches

 

1. IF: COUNTERPOINTS

If you marvelled at the dance of the Northern Lights
Counterpointing the smouldering plumes of ashen smoke
Billowing out of an Eyjafjallajokull cradled by melting glacier,

Or quietly scanned the opal horizons of Banda Aceh swathed
In a glorious sunset chiaroscuro before the waves claimed
Atolls and infants back into the rip tide roar of that tsunami;

If you were ambushed by an unforgiving temblor that rocked
Haiti out of its romping in reggae regaled beaches turned
Into common graveyards of carrion crushed under rubble;

If you have walked through cherry-blossom-strewn streets
And smiled at strangers’ hallooing: How about this spring?
Before rampaging twister funnels crushed hearths and homes;

If you have strolled and danced ragtime beat on Orleans’
Roadhouses rocking rampant with rap and razzmatazz
Before Katrina’s wrath wreaked hell’s hurricane havoc;

If you still marvel at forest flowers as God’s fingers
And espy sandpipers bolt through thicket cramping marsh
Before infernal flames crackle through Santa Barbara’s hills;

If you have stolen kisses and felt purloined embraces
In the limpid ripples of Cancun’s caressingly undulant seas
Before the onset of the curdling spill on the playa negra;

If you braved the stygian stink of Ilog Pasig and sang songs
While harvesting floating tulips, debris, or stray crayfish
For some foregone repast before it turned into River Styx;

If you have lived through these and now blow fanfare
For Earth’s being the right place for love or maybe care,
You might yet begin to accept that Mother’s lullabies were
Also her gnashing of teeth when you wailed through nights
When slumber would have allowed her love not tantrums
Of infants grown now and “quartered in the hands of war”:


2. WRATH OF DAYS

How else explain the wrath of days descending
not into quietness but pain? Has she not kept her anger
in check for all the tantrums of the Ages: Thermopylae,
Masada, Ilium, Pompeii? Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Nagasaki?
Stalin’s pogroms? The death chambers and Holocaust trains?
Polpot’s killing fields in Kampuchea? Rwanda’s genocide?

Before it lured tourist trekkers, the verboten Walls of China?
The Berlin Wall? The Gaza Wall? Fences of n.i.m.b.y.
neighbours: India and Pakistan, Iran and Iraq, splintered
Korea, the Irelands shorn of the emerald isles, the fractured
United Kingdom where the sun has finally set on its Empire,
the still haemorrhaging American southern states crippled
and still unyoked from black history but seething now
from the African-American’s irascible entitlement ---

With Zimbabwe’s apartheid, Congo’s rapes, Ethiopia’s
hunger, Sudan’s ceaseless putsch tango, Somalia’s piracy
trade, tribal wars in Uganda, Namibia, Botswana, Kenya,
will blacks overcome someday, soon? Only if they, too,
would get munitions from Venezuela’s bottomless vaults
gurgling with black gold, aceite y petroleo, and Oil of Ages.
Lubricator of the war and killing machines, In Oil we Trust.

3. THE SPILL AND FALL

Has it gone any better? Love on this piece of terra infirma?
That’s when Mother shushed you back to sleep,
An impatient rhythm clipping away what should have been
A gently lulling melody from the Song of Ages:

Rock-a-bye, baby on the treetop; when the wind blows,
The cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle
Will fall; and down will come baby, cradle, and all.

The bough breaks, and you scream. Too late for that.
This is not a dream. The freefall is Mother’s little slip
When she could no longer hold you still, somnolence
Finally taking over, and your cri d’couer, a scream
For help, for caress, for all the love gone from an empty room.
The cradle falls, she can’t pick it up. Exhausted and utterly
Spent, she mutters in her sleep: Spare the rod, spoil the child.

Tomorrow, if it comes, Mother will prop up --- backaches
Assault her waking days now --- will step into her plimsoll
As she would her dancing pumps, oil-soaked slippers.
She will slip and fall before anyone else wakes up.
She will yell: “Damn it, who spilled oil on the floor this time?”


--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

CAMPFIRE LULLABIES: TWO POEMS

 

CAMPFIRE LULLABIES: TWO POEMS

Real stories tonight, she says, not/made-up. Like what I did, summers when /I was her age: ---From “Real” by Luisa A. Igloria

(For Diana Patricia, Daniel Anthony, Matthew Francis, Taylor Lauren, Megan Sarah, Michael Albert, Sydney Alexis, Chloe Dominique, Louis Martin, and Marie Clementine)

1. Then

Something about a canopy of stars

and the darkness among the pines
must turn them into giggling elves
traipsing among the lantern flies.
Bugs with lit tailpipes, he calls them.
She stifles a guffaw, shushes him:
you will wake the hungry bear up.
Would you want to wake up inside
his swirling stomach? He whispers
under the tangled sheet: tell me more
stories, real ones this time. About
how you and abuela stopped a bus
while crossing the street, and she
gave the yelling driver her fat finger.

2. Now/Maybe Much Later

Here we are, imp of a brother grown

beyond those yarns. Will you tell
your own boy---raucously laughing
all by himself in his dimly lit tent---
the same grandmother stories?
“Once upon a time,” will not do it,
they grow quickly beyond that.
Why not lull him instead with one
of grandfather’s hammock songs?
“When you talk to these trees,
they will always answer you: Close
your eyes tightly, we will sing to you.”
Here we are, imp of a sister, plotting
lullabies by campfire, when sons beg:
Will you tell us real grandma stories?

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

A GAME OF PONTOONS

A GAME OF PONTOONS

(For Mikey)
 

Mikey (Michael Albert Casuga who turned 12 last May 7) bested his cousins in the game of balancing on the lily pads (mock pontoons) while crossing the pool without falling into the water before he gets to the last pontoon. This ancient mariner, bedazzled by his grandchildren’s confidence and derring-do, failed to even get past the first pontoon despite their egging him on: Come on, ‘lolo! You can do it! Just do it! --- Writer's Notebook on a Family Break at Great Wolf Lodge, Niagara


He leap-frogged lithely
with tentative grace
from one drifting lily pad
to the other, an uncertain smile
creased on his elfin face:
quite like relishing
the exquisite danger
of leaping from one life
moment to another
shorn of anxiety or fear
a fall could end it all.

Would the pontoons hold
while he teeters on them
grasping for absent branches?

His final leap was also
this old heart’s leap of faith
that this lad’s leap-frogging
will end in a crash of pool
where ripples are his balm
and sinking is his baptism
of fire in a game called living
where bridges crumble
with the tottering pontoons.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

Michael Albert Casuga, youngest child of my unico hijo, Albert Beau Casuga, stands on the fourth row sandwiched by his sister Megan, cousins Sydney, Chloe, and Taylor.