HIS FIRST DRINK

HIS FIRST DRINK

Overcast. The softly glowing reds and yellows, the hum of crickets, even the normally annoying call of a towhee all inspire nostalgia. --- Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 09-26-11

 

What is it about gloom and an overcast sky

that calls back from buried remembrances

shadows of a discarded past folded like linen

tacked neatly into closets, camphorated, and

forgotten in dark attics until the next funeral?

Small consolation that these leaves transform

into a bravura of rainbow colours before fall

claims them from their trembling branches. 

Blown off with the winds to places unknown,

would anyone recall how they sheltered birds,

worms, held nests in the fork of twigs, even

wayward kites? A fanfare of cricket songs,

however cacophonic, forms part of a memory

when even the bark of a whimpering mongrel

or the monotone of a midnight owl remind

us of walks in the dark trying to get home on a

drunken tune whistled and yelled to the moon: 

“I got a little drink, it went to my head. Show

me the way to go home!  I did not get there.

--- Albert B. Casuga

09-26-11