WELCOME HOME COUNTERPOINTS: TWO POEMS

WELCOME HOME COUNTERPOINTS

 

“Canadian soldiers come home from Afghanistan. ---Today’s Toronto Star headline, 03-19-14

 

Photo by Cole Burston/AFP/Getty Images From the LOOP, Sympatico.ca Site

 

 1. THE KISS

”No one to meet this lad. So the giggling stranger kissed him. ---Caption of Kiss photo.

She said he looked alone and bewildered:

Wives and children kissing their husbands,
Dads crushing stiff hair on yammering boys’
Mohawk heads, a weeping mother hugs
Her plump lass back home from the Marines.
No one to meet this lad, she muttered. Why?

There was that picture when WWII ended

With an Allied victory sealed with a kiss;
That’s what will be remembered. Always;
Not the Nagasaki and Hiroshima massacre
With Enola Gay’s monster bombs. The Kiss.
The lad and lass in a tango swoon. The Kiss.

Weakly wiping his now scraggy shaved chin

After a swig off his canteen (buddy at war),
He leapt to catch her who jumped wantonly
Into his arms to give him the Afghan Kiss
That will now be a pin-up of peeping gigglers,
Each lad wanting to enlist in the next war.
 

2. THE ONE WHO STAYED HOME

“My boys ain’t comin’ home.---Iqaluit Dad

On my hammock hour, I watch shadows
jump off my porch walls, talk with them,
and watch them grow tall at sundown.

Dusk and the quick sunset swallow them
into a night I hope would not be bivouac
cold. My boys are too young to be cut down.

I don’t need medals or a flag if they come
home at all—there’s a law that says I could
not use them flags for blankets on cold days.

Nor give them medals to their dear mother
who has gone ahead to happy hunting grounds.
Medals? I’d rather have tin mess cups for mugs.

—ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

 

LESSONS THROUGH TIME

 

LESSONS THROUGH TIME

 

 

 

1. IN HER TIME: A SKIING LESSON

 

(For Martin, Teaching Marie)

 

Will you grow older than these lessons,

Mon chère? Will you gather pictures
Like dada-abuelo peppers and papers
His dusty study with his world’s magic?

Papa will no doubt pin this on his wall,

I wager all my left-over memories,
He will: it is this lesson of love and daring
That he will always remember, repeat:

“Go, chère, find your slope and subdue it,

Ride over all the covered snow lumps,
Leap over the stumps, swerve and stomp.
No dreads, brave girl, this glide is yours.”

Down there, in yet another world, prayer

Is passé; that comes only after a striving,
Not after the wind, but a hankering for power
You must dig out from your heart when sliding.

Down there, when you have grabbed your slope,

Eat the snow on the ground, it is your prayer.
Lick the pine cones on your way off the trail
They are your trophies. Each one, my prayer.

 

  

2. IN HIS TIME: A SWIMMING LESSON

For Father (Francisco F. Casuga+)

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.

 

 

 

3. IN HIS TIME: DOWN THE SLOPE

(For Father, Who Never Felt Snow)

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.

------ ALBERT B. CASUGA

__________

*Clearings made by burning forests

 With Father, Martin, Mother, Adele Frances Casuga, and siblings Chloe Dominique and Louis Martin (in goggles)

 

 

 

Her Father, Martin Lalonde, and Marie Clementine, In Her Time

A FLOWER WITHIN: YOKED HAIKUS

 

 

 A FLOWER WITHIN

Look and mark this well:
A flower grows inside one
nurturing blossom.
 
Much like a mother
would glow while she gently bears
a seed sown, now grown

to yet another

bloom, a heart that grows alone
to bear a flower.

---Albert B. Casuga   
 

HIS TRANSFIGURATION ON THE SLOPE

 HIS TRANSFIGURATION ON THE SLOPE

I've got me the best excuse yet for all this snow:
She giggles through it all, slopes and shadows
On a cold blank mantle that would send old men
Screaming for a bit of sun in their withering lives.
"In sand or in snow, or meadows, too, abuelo,
I've got them covered, because I can. Just watch me."
She sloshes down with such aplomb I forgive this
frozen mayhem and wish for her to cover the length
between fear and wonder of how winter in her eyes
has brought spring and sunshine quickly into mine.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

THEY TRUSTED THE PAVEMENT INSTEAD

 

 

 

It was a revolting site to say the least. Wee lads sleeping on the pavement. People rush by. The bakery owner leaned indifferently on his counter. In Church, I heard the young priest quote from Paul's Letter to the Corinthians today: Trust ...the Lord, He is Forever Faithful. 

THEY TRUSTED THE PAVEMENT INSTEAD


They slept soundly on the pavement
right next to a bakery. Or was it an act?

Two lads lying like leaves left where they fell.
Shuffling quickly away, even mothers ignored them.

Little boys. I would not even call them beggars.
Nobody will pick them off the cold bakery cobbles.

Have they run off from home to fend for themselves?
Did they ask to be born? What loins expelled them?

Whence they spring, was there not some beastly lust
akin to that of prowling dogs? They are just boys.

What bitch abandons her pups in this penury and pain?
Where was the hand that caught them from that hole?

How would these lads grow old enough to hear the priest
intone at the mass nearby: Trust in the Lord, He is Faithful.

If I felt bad enough, why did I not pick them up?
Why could I not have called the city hall? The Church?

Or wake them up and feed them bread, clothe them,
give them shelter. They are the least of our brethren.

We were rushing to church, we were a tad late; I took time
to finish my noodles and hot soup on a cold evening like this.


---ALBERT B, CASUGA



 

by Waqt News Photo

A HAMMOCK GAME: LAYING STRAIGHT SOME KNOTTED STRINGS

 

 

Things we do while we wait. Soon enough, we will have straightened those knotted threads. That done, we should be ready. Are we? 

 

A HAMMOCK GAME: LAYING STRAIGHT SOME KNOTTED STRINGS

 

 

There will be time, there will be time,/ To prepare a face to meet the face that you meet...T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

 
If we only had time on our side,
we would play hammock games.
Remember those balls of yarn
we gathered into knots while she
puttered in her little herb garden?

How she would tear at her hair
finding them strung like cobwebs
across her ornately carved chests
in the room that smelled of camphor.
A mesh of rainbow strings, abuela!

I would plead for them to remain
hanging trellis-like until sundown
when the setting sun’s rays break
through the window’s bamboo slats
and cast eerie shadows on her bed.

Was it worth all the time we rued
as lost kite-flying hours, while she
held her cane at a striking distance
and barked at every giggle spent
away from unravelling those knots?

Here I am, on my hammock hour,
untwisting those lost threads now
still knotted in my old cold heart,
where I know I can still hear her ask:
have you laid all your strings straight?

---Albert B. Casuga

 

 

LEFT UNSAID

Ashes in my mouth, like loves left unsaid. Nothing to take back, nothing to give.

 

 

 

LEFT UNSAID

 I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it/Since what is kept must be adulterated?—T.S. Eliot, Gerontion
 

Nothing could be taken back, nothing offered.
The passion I thought I had is an old saw—
it would not, could not cut through the years
that have turned into whorled cores in a tree
cut down in the harvest of logs, in a clearing
that will not grow again. Will not be here again.
Dry timber in a forest fire. Ashes in my mouth,
like loves left unsaid. Nothing to take back nor give.

---Albert B. Casuga

SUMMING UP: A WAITING GAME

 

 

A line from Eliot would be a good epitaph: "Hurry up please it's Time./Now Albert is coming back,/ make yourself a bit smart."* 

SUMMING UP: 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)

HIS ENTREATY

 

ENTREATY

It is what we do when we are in an open sea,

locked in roiled waters on uncertain weather:
you row like my life depended on it, I row
you away from your fears that somewhere,
sometime, in this abiding turbulence, I will
absently dive into the dark depths and stay
under, finding solace from not resurfacing,
when bobbing up for air means we have to row
into a shore of rocks, run aground, and dash
like the homing waves into a brackish boulder.

But I am rowing back with you to that sandbar

where I etched the letters framed in a pierced
heart that has yet to be erased by ebbing tide.
Will you find time then to write your promise?

---Albert B. Casuga

 

OMNI SOLI SEMPER

 

 

OMNI SOLI SEMPER

Keep your eyes wide open if you want to dream---Paolo Coelho

The ones we talk about or ache to recall

the morning after, we call nightmares.

A love-sick, maudlin, slobbering goodbye

in the tight-pillow-hug tearjerker dream?

It was not a dream. It is a stifled desire,

a constipation “devoutly to be wished”.

Shrinks shrank these into Freudian blots

on the balance sheets of love and hate:

You want to run as wildly far away as you

could, id permitting, haunches allowing.

One needy life is enough torment; free

yourself then from this strangled trellis,

where hanging like a wanton leaf is not

the twin of hanging on but dangling still

until hurts can no longer wound you,

nor gentle caress save you. You are a stone.

No fall can sever you from tangled vines

that summer burns, nor frost cripple you;

you would not even pray for the spring

to bring sunrises and sunsets to heal you.

Open your eyes and dream that loneliness

becomes you; you are strong and alone,

omni soli, semper. Will courage redeem

you then from the stupidity of being brave

and alone? And when you sleep, will you

remember to open your eyes and dream?

--- Albert B. Casuga