Click above to listen to a feature review on TRILL & MORDENT, written by Lisa Murray for the local NPR station; her review ran on March 31, 2006

Poems

TREE OF WATCHFULNESS

(first published in RUNES 2002, “Mystery”; Pushcart Prize Nomination)

Father, I brought a basin of lukewarm
water and a towel with which to wash
your feet. I coaxed the dry cotton socks

over the raised pink swellings around each
ankle and felt the weight of your regret
rest briefly in each palm. I sorted your letters,

emptied your desk drawers, unshuttered
the windows to let air in, the false
odors of longing from the starfruit fallen

to the ground. Leaves held the sound of spirits
calling. In the morning you choked, perhaps
in the recitation of their names. Some say you

were a hummingbird, or a moth shredding
its wings on the satin lining of your open
casket. Each night I smooth my inheritance

like a sheet or a pillow, this sleep of wake-
fulness that divides the work of hours
from the dream of completion, that teaches

the flowering of darkness in both pleasure
and falling. It slips one hand into a pocket,
curved in the shape of a fist, while the other

continues its signing and saying in sunlight,
even as the heart’s caged animals sharpen
their claws, their unpredictable hungers.

From Trill & Mordent
© September 2005, by Luisa Igloria

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