PASTURES THAT HOLD ME BACK

 

PASTURES THAT HOLD ME BACK

1.

I have time to paint a collage of faces
I have known in the deep mosaic
of a past now graffitied on these walls.
I am not ready to go beyond the hills,
not yet anyway;  uncharted pastures
have no signposts for coming back.

Olden days as a pasture---an expanse

of growth and green alive to laughter
and song---that’s where I am going.
Where windswept bramble rustles
with grass, you will find me there.
I can’t be rushed to skip off beyond.

Isn’t this why we hoard our memories?

We carry them like playing marbles
in pockets over our hearts, an easy draw
when the game is called, a quick toss
into holes dug on dirt we crawl on like
the kids we were, rolling them to dusk.

2.

A smile after a first kiss would help me
remember there are caresses there
as indelible, as urgent, as when first
given or surrendered by the one lover
whose courage saw me through times
when absconding was an easy way out.

A rollicking hug from the boisterous

son, a lonely issue, my only boy, recalls
a hesitant embrace for my dying father
who whispered from his rocking chair
my schoolboy snivelling was poor form,
he needed a man’s goodbye. Goodbye.

Olden days are there to sieve through

to find markers along obscured paths
once brightly lit now darkened or lost.
The litter of olden days strewn like dry
leaves along my walk home holds me
back, awake again: I do not want to go.

---Albert B. Casuga

05-14-2014, Mississauga