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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.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

MIME: GOODBYES LEFT UNSAID

 
 
 
MIME: GOODBYES LEFT UNSAID 

It would be a murky deluge in reverse,
should these leaves find themselves
rampaging back to quivering branches
like snarling currents breaking through
porous earth to reclaim what is theirs.

But this magical return to shorn foliages
would be a gentler dance with the wind,
quite unlike the clutch of moss and mud
that has turned the hillsides into brackish
blankets of debris and ruptured places.

A mime of frolicking birds prepping up
for a sullen fall robbed of the rain of leaves?
Mirroring the river’s angry repossession
of the land, the large flock of small birds
skitter through the trees like fluttering

leaves returning to trembling branches
that are perhaps askance at playing hosts
once again to fallen comrades that leave
when the leaving is easy, when the dying
is de rigueur, when goodbyes are left unsaid.

—Albert B. Casuga

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