FEVER

FEVER

My errands get simpler now: cut marks

On trees, branches, rocks, leaves, walls,

wherever I know you will wind your way

coming home. It is a long route back. 

But you will find them like those prints

of fallen leaves mottling the lake girdling

bluffs we run to when we retrieve lost

memories that somehow remain clear: 

we smell them, we touch them, we feel

them like waning fevers that stay warm

on our flushed faces. We will not forget.

We are condemned to remember. Always.

---Albert B. Casuga

07-13-11

Prompt: Your fever breaks;/then the longer route home, blue-girdled by lake/water that bears prints of leaves fallen, still flushed.---From “Traces” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 07-12-11