AN UNCOMMON SENSE (Hammock Poems Series)

AN UNCOMMON SENSE

 

That humans need time, and the senses/with which to paddle through it/and navigate, and to get lost in the water’s/response as we push and kick.---From“Making Sense” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist.

It was a Rational Psychology 101 lecture,

and half of us were half asleep. De rigueur: 

Half of what I now recall about nothing

is that there is nothing in the mind  

that does not first exist in the senses.

Common sense.  Except that it is uncommon. 

Is it not special to find that goose pimples

are but the tell-tale signs of being touched? 

That time, you caressed my face when you saw

those letters I cut into that hapless branch. 

You did not need to say anything: your heart

did as it skipped a beat, my head on your chest. 

“Con amor duradero*,” completed the carving.

Your mute kiss said:  forever. I said: always. 

 Would our eyes have seen that same eternity

if they were all that we had to have and to hold? 

On sundowns like this, on my hammock hour,

I look back to those lost years, bleary eyed. 

My mind was right. Nothing lives forever.

Are our lives all a lump of dearly felt lies then? 

What we felt then die, and are strewn like limp

clocks in a Dali landscape, despite memories? 

Yet, during these precious hammock hours,

I’d rather have seen, felt, caressed, and kissed 

Every undulant shadow before me, danced

that light fandango with them, talked to them 

even if they did not hear me nor care to hold

me, until I fall asleep muttering still: Forever.

---Albert B. Casuga

06-27-11

_________

*With lasting love. 

 http://thestorialist.blogspot.com./2011/06/

06-20-11

Photo by Bobby Ong Jr.