GUESS WHO CALLED TODAY?

(Poro Point, a painting by Perla Generosa-Patricio, amiga duradera.)

GUESS WHO CALLED TODAY?

The person you must speak to,/ but cannot call, you dread it so much.---From “Let Me Do This Thing for You” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 02-22-11

Has it all been fifty years? Same voice, same lilt

across the seas, and all we could talk about is hurt,

kneecaps, and their replacement. Hiked a hundred

highways. Always, always, this is home. Who else

would laugh raucously about a painful, painful cut

across a decrepit bone? Who would imagine pails

of tears, as you cracked the newly-installed joint,

crawling on all fours like the prouder forebears,

just so you could find refuge among soft pillows?

Retreat to your darkened bedroom. Curse the cut. 

Except that today, when you called, you were your

three-hundred-sixty-five-day guffawing patient;

and all this is for your new-found-patient friend,

my fearful wife, whose kneecaps need never be

used again, wherever rendezvous around the bend

brings us. You were kind enough to tell her: Go for it.

Have them alter what you got from both fathers

in heaven and on earth. It will only add more to our

fancy-free roving, the highways still untravelled. 

Oh, you gleefully chattered: we recalled birthdates,

and found you older; but I had always wanted to be

your big brother to shelter you from a joie de vivre

that would throw all cautions to the wanton wind.

While we waited for your return call, (we missed you

last night), I guessed you were the shadow on a pane

looming into a scarcely-heated study, but I knew

the past would no longer be dreaded; they have come

to regale us with hope, no, not fear and trembling.  

She was silently impressed: Both of you have never

grown old, one can pick that up from your laughter.

Touching her knees, she stood up quickly. Pain. Pain.

But cheers to old friends. Love to them. Salamat, Perla.*

--- Albert B. Casuga

02-22-12

(Perla and her husband Franco at New Jersey, USA.)

*Salamat, Perla. ---Thank you, Perla.