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ALBERT B. CASUGA, a Philippine-born writer, lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where he continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism after his retirement from teaching and serving as an elected member of his region's school board. He was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. A graduate of the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Thomas (now University of Santo Tomas, Manila. Literature and English, magna cum laude), he taught English and Literature (Criticism, Theory, and Creative Writing) at the Philippines' De La Salle University and San Beda College. He has authored books of poetry, short stories, literary theory and criticism. He has won awards for his works in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Philippines. His latest work, A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems was published February 2009 by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. His fiction and poetry were published by online literary journals Asia Writes and Coastal Poems recently. He was a Fellow at the 1972 Silliman University Writers Workshop, Philippines. As a journalist, he worked with the United Press International and wrote an art column for the defunct Philippines Herald.

Monday, November 12, 2012

WHAT MEANING MEANS


 
 
WHAT MEANING MEANS

 
Giving up on giving up is a better choice,
when being sensible and clear are futile.
Words would lose meaning, ours will not.  

Where you see a vine leading its tendrils
up to a broken branch shedding a last leaf,
you make me see its undulant plummet  

to the parched pond mottled by blackened
and brittle leaves long dead even before
the end of this long hot summer. It is real.  

Is this not our faultless way of knowing
what we pretend to know when we can
no longer see the dancer from the dance?  

Would not the falling of that lonely leaf
trace the slower climb of a clinging vine?
Like seeing both sides of the wall at once.  

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 
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