DOWN THE SLOPE (For Francisco F. Casuga+)
Yet all the precedent is on my side:/I know that winter death has never tried/The earth but it has failed;.../It cannot check the peeper’s silver croak. —Robert Frost, The Onset
I would run down the slope and catch myself
a rolling ball of snow before it falls into the ravine,
but walking through the silently falling snow
at the trail is a choice for these creaking knees—
no more gossoon games defying gravity for me
or flying off the hillside edge into fluff below
among the stiffened bramble and wild apple tree.
There’s warmth in the silence of falling snow:
I feel his gentle hands on my nape, I hear him,
I ask him if he would drink a pint with me
if I had reached beer-guzzling age before
he’d make his final trek, before he’d leave,
but I hear his whistling for the wind instead
and tug at his wayward kite now puncturing
some sombre summer sky in San Fernando.
O, how I’d run down the barren slopes to catch
his fallen kite among the burnt logs of the kaingin*
but these are flakes I find myself catching
and whipped out twigs that break the silence
of falling snow. O my father.
* Clearings made by burning forests
ON THE FREEWAY
It’s time we found the highway,
we seem to be driving in circles,
and the breaking circles are obscured
by the constantly hugging low clouds
that wrap around legs like children
pleading: Don’t go away, don’t go!
The highway sounds close, the hush
has broken into the steady hum
of the scrambling city—we will be
there before sundown, and get on
with put-off plans to ride down
those highways: We cannot go back.
The freeway sounds close,
the shimmering air smells of carbon
burning away the creeping clouds
that have waylaid us on our rush
to get out and not come back
to old houses and blackened ponds
too distant to remember. It is late.
ALBERT B. CASUGA was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. He won the national Philippine Parnaso Poetry Contest in the '70s, and first prizes in the Mississauga-Canada Library Systems Literary Contests in 1990 (for Fiction), 1996 (for Poetry), and 1998 (for Poetry). His works have appeared in the Philippines Free Press, Graphic Weekly Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine (Maryland), Philippine Writing (edited by the late NVM Gonzalez), A Habit of Shores (UP Press, ed. Gemino H. Abad), among many others. He publishes a literary blog at http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.com.
Yet all the precedent is on my side:/I know that winter death has never tried/The earth but it has failed;.../It cannot check the peeper’s silver croak. —Robert Frost, The Onset
I would run down the slope and catch myself
a rolling ball of snow before it falls into the ravine,
but walking through the silently falling snow
at the trail is a choice for these creaking knees—
no more gossoon games defying gravity for me
or flying off the hillside edge into fluff below
among the stiffened bramble and wild apple tree.
There’s warmth in the silence of falling snow:
I feel his gentle hands on my nape, I hear him,
I ask him if he would drink a pint with me
if I had reached beer-guzzling age before
he’d make his final trek, before he’d leave,
but I hear his whistling for the wind instead
and tug at his wayward kite now puncturing
some sombre summer sky in San Fernando.
O, how I’d run down the barren slopes to catch
his fallen kite among the burnt logs of the kaingin*
but these are flakes I find myself catching
and whipped out twigs that break the silence
of falling snow. O my father.
* Clearings made by burning forests
ON THE FREEWAY
It’s time we found the highway,
we seem to be driving in circles,
and the breaking circles are obscured
by the constantly hugging low clouds
that wrap around legs like children
pleading: Don’t go away, don’t go!
The highway sounds close, the hush
has broken into the steady hum
of the scrambling city—we will be
there before sundown, and get on
with put-off plans to ride down
those highways: We cannot go back.
The freeway sounds close,
the shimmering air smells of carbon
burning away the creeping clouds
that have waylaid us on our rush
to get out and not come back
to old houses and blackened ponds
too distant to remember. It is late.
ALBERT B. CASUGA was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. He won the national Philippine Parnaso Poetry Contest in the '70s, and first prizes in the Mississauga-Canada Library Systems Literary Contests in 1990 (for Fiction), 1996 (for Poetry), and 1998 (for Poetry). His works have appeared in the Philippines Free Press, Graphic Weekly Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine (Maryland), Philippine Writing (edited by the late NVM Gonzalez), A Habit of Shores (UP Press, ed. Gemino H. Abad), among many others. He publishes a literary blog at http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.com.
