A HAMMOCK SONG

 

A HAMMOCK SONG

(For Julian Ashley+)

 

It is the Sea eats limb so life (so love)/ may not to its eternal wanting finish/ what it late started must soon deny:/ a clown’s journey through a circle’s shadow. . .

 

 Another fishing season would have gone by sundown,

but I have stopped counting and stopped fishing, too.

Think of all the bass that got away and the crayfish

dried brittle on rocks laved clean of seaweed and brine,
ebb tide marking rhythm and time when breaking waves

drown the homeward hallos of fishermen pulling empty

nets and ruined mesh dragged off by rotting catamarans

whose relics now jag brackish breakwater boulders

when low tide retrieves stray shells wrapped in flotsam.

It is my hammock hour. Come swing yourself
on this final refuge. Don’t take too long, hijo.
We have groupers to grill, oysters to chuck!

Echoes of your shrill shrieks and laughter startle me
still when I cock my ear to catch them filling rooms

and spaces that I would have shared with you if you

had only given me the chance to teach you how to fish.

But you left without saying goodbye. At sundown,

though, on my hammock hour, I still hum your lullaby.

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA
 

WRITER'S NOTEBOOK:

Last October 2, Julian Ashley Casuga-Dela Rosa, my first grandchild, would have been 29, but he succumbed to sudden infant death syndrome four months after his birth. Con amor duradero, hijo mio.