BECAUSE YOU ASKED ME TO STAY

 

 

BECAUSE YOU ASKED ME TO STAY

 

(For Lourdes Veronica)

Summer simmers down, but it isn’t/ all gone. So drink slowly, drink/ everything, down to the thick,/ dark sludge at the bottom/ of the cup. Out in the fields,/find what remains when the grain/ has separated from the chaff.---From “Stay” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa 8-15-14

 

All I needed to hear: “Stay. Stay.” I have come home

Like that long absent hummingbird on your sill,
The one you said you would wait for on the trellises
That have fallen from a crowd of dead flower buds.
 

Take me back. Take me back. And we will retrace
those letters carved on some saplings grown tall
beyond our reach, and sing with carillon clangor
those old evensongs, brave songs. Old love songs.

 

We will outdo the bell choir master on the belfry,
ring them all, sing them all, hum them all until
sundown overtakes us and we hold our tremulous
voices like our stuttered promises of coming home.

 

I must turn around, will tarry at the street’s end,

wait for you. Must drink cold tea to its bottom sludge.
Will out-hoot the newfound owl on our lone oak tree.
Will drown rain staccato with my raunchiest halloo.
 

Hell will wait, heaven will not. I have some Zorba

dancing to do,  naked and happy again in this rain.

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

Mississauga, August 18, 2014