What
whimsy of rain
could squeeze
the sun
from your green?
Only
the tartest of hearts
could blush
yellow
and shed
an acid
tear
Kalamansi Heart by Alfredo Roces, and the ekphrastic whimsy based on it.
(Kalamansi is a green citron, limoncito, or small lemon; Citrus microcarpa.)
Luisa Igloria
Parsing
You could lift the hem of rain and enter its grotto. Habit is what blurs gesture into allotment and enclosure. Fold it between times with a monk's cord of silence, just a slick of candle-fat. That way the next becomes sacrament.
Ladies in cream linen and sandals, men in madras cotton. Resolute and demanding, the world I love. Emerging through screens of glass and leaf, mercurial light tinting the sands amber, taming the water so it rises and quickens again.
Each day in my plain grey outfit I've waited patiently for a sign. Even the shoe with the frayed tassel has gleaming copper caught in its teeth. I want to be like that, now or in our afterlife.
(originally published in Trill & Mordent, WordTech Editions, 2005)
PHOTO: Water drops caught in a spider web inside a calyx, by Rod Samonte
