HOLES AND MANHOLES

 

 

HOLES AND MANHOLES

 

Tiny holes riddle the leaves of a heal-all plant, turning it to orange-tinged lace. What small creature requires so much medicine? --- Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 09-28-11

 

There are holes and there are holes: these are almost delicate patterns
seen against the punctures on her face—wellsprings of warranty, bliss,

solace, trinkets, pecking order symbols, insignias of heft on Wall Street
greed, vanity of vanities. What picayune creature needs this panacea,
this balm for irreducible ennui?

The caterpillar crawling on the leaf, gives back a mariposa’s glorious
colours, a leitmotif of magical dabs, to show for those holes. Maggots
on the fallen leaves become fruit flies, dump flies bound by ordained
duties in this woods’ give-and-take. Green fodder from those holes
are miracles of growth and beauty.

But those holes on the side of hills, entrails of ruptured caverns, geysers

dug offshore and spring caves, mines-quarries-tar-sands-reefs-fossils,
abandoned common graves in gold and coal mines moistened by blood
and congealed sweat—are diadem vaults of stones, silver, myrrh, gems,
uranium, plutonium, plosive grit— all, all molten nosegays to crown
the smallest creature of them all, fig-leaf-covered man and woman
still in bad need of blandishments of comfort, power, and lust to cure
his inchoate, eternal smallness. Pity.

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA