Caliban Ponders Rust   VIRGIL SUÁREZ   In the waxen sheen of moon light, he moves         toward the light of his cave, right where waves echo their plight, this susurrus of pull and tug,         earthy gravity toward which he's learn to lean. How much of the human body is carbon? Salt?         Water? These are the questions he ponders while keeping warm beside a fire he's built         with wood scraps. The guayaba limb crackles and pops, moist a secret within its folds, rust?         The idea forms slowly, then overpowers him.         cemetery, this much he's seen from his days as gravedigger. A faint ochre appearing in cracks,         right where joints hinge, stick with a last speck of tendon, ligament. He has seen how metal goes,         a growth of verdigris patina where rain water's kiss has fallen. Here next to the fire, cast like a broken         shadow on the cave walls, Caliban looks at his hands, ponders the fate of his fingers. He can seen them         clawed in rictus, a fixed smile upon his face. Rust serves as reminder, surely, of how he's learned         to listen to eternity's silence, right here where fire keeps him warm. Right here where he's begun         to think of this blossom in his mind opening forever. Virgil Suárez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1962. Since 1974 he has living in the United States. He is the author of four novels, The Cutter, Latin Jazz, Havana Thursdays, and Going Under, and of the collection of stories, Welcome to the Oasis. His memoirs, Spared Angola: Memories of a Cuban-American Childhood and Café Nostalgia: Writing from the Hyphen, chronicle his life of exile in both Cuba and the United States. He is alo the author of five collections of Poetry: Garabato Poems, You Come Singing, In the Republic of Longing, Palm Crows, and Banyan. TLR Web home page