L'aura del Campo

Three April sketches

It's hard being purple ...or any color other than white.



Too much money

One ends up with paper in the mattress
while eating crumbs of day-old bread.

One forgets coins can be exchanged for needs;
one forgets how to spend.

The remembrance of want has been vanquished;
the anguish of not having enough never parts.

Better to not empty the pillow then;
better to deny one still has wants.

Better to only have what one needs,
to survive by forgetting, to hoard, let it be.

Kåre Enga 2011-04-11 [168.37]

Catching my fall

Watch an osprey circle and hover.
Watch it flutter then dive.

I no longer glide
with the long strides of youth,
keen eyes of crow.
I flutter. I dive, then let go,
catch myself, twist a wrist.
I am aging each hour I exist.
And I'm balding, an osprey chick in reverse.
Perversity chuckles at my feeble attempts to survive,
but much like an osprey braving the snow,
an outgoing winter reluctant to leave,
I find old in the new,
in each snowflake and osprey,
in life on the wing.

Kåre Enga 2011-04-09 [168.33]

Baskets

Day 1

Pendulum

I watch the pendulum swing:
boxes of pudding in the top basket,
potatoes on the bottom,
bananas, an apple, rice in between.

It swings long after I forget that it’s swinging.

Breath

I am breathing I tell my mirror;
My heart’s beating, tell a friend.
To one who has long forgot me:
I remember you with every breath.

Garlic

Rice and beans finish.
Garlic fragrance fills my rooms.
The windows open, the flame set lower,
I sit here writing; the potatoes still swing.

Loss

In this City of Lost Lovers
everything is loss.
Would that there were lovers
Would that there were love.
In this city no one ever finds
what never was.

Day 2

Quickened

Chocolate-peanut-butter blends
with a blackened ripe banana,
whirrs in the milk, releases a fragrance,
circum-tropic, an odor of lust.

I add in sugar, dextrose, food starch,
the di-sodium phosphate. Gruel thickens.
I pour the thickening brew into bowls.
It quickens into pudding.

Orange

Black beans slow-cook in the enameled cast iron pot.
Carrots swirl, color the water.
Orange peels rest in the garbage.
In a basket hung from the ceiling,
one apple twirls.

Silk

I’ve found not-thinking-of-you to be futile.
The Ghost-of-your-Muse follows me about.
In each swallow of pudding, of bile, of milk,
It’s a silk caress on my thoughts.

Laughter

Three baskets still swirl,
swirled yesterday, tomorrow, will eventually stop
until brushed once again:
by stirring carrots or beans in the pot
by the laughter in your voice,
the relationship that‘s not.

Kåre Enga 2011-04-09 [168.34A-H]



[37] My relationship with money has been troubled.
[33] Well, I nearly sprained my wrist falling on ice.
[34] I was home cooking and watching three baskets swirl like a pendulum.

Rereading Costa Rican poetry. As always.

Cold.

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