The long while

The long while has much silence as words.
A married woman arrives on the front door.
She holds a picnic basket.
She has eyes that say 
"Do not ask anymore, I am here."

And all the long while I wonder
What prompts a man to open a door, 
Let her come in. 
Or yet, closes the door behind him
As he joins her elsewhere.

A poem for you

Photo by WV Mozer

Time for rowing 
and fishing.
A bear alone
but not quite 
in the distance.
The sense
of quiet.
Though nothing
truly is.

inside the ribcage

Here, at this time of the year, the sky flatten 
the hours. It becomes almost impossible to tell,
sometimes, the time unless you press your pulse

to know you are still among the living. Here,
where every thing has become so efficient and
then not. The selvedges are ripped, if one cares

to notice. Such small things like the seeing
through an opened window the lovers, now kissing,
have forgotten to close. Most of the time

every one has learned to move with flat-line
hearts that have become so civil, so tirelessly
euphemistic that at times I am beginning to feel

this calamity, incredibly scripted, un-human.

the silk road

Names are always beautiful. As beautiful 
as we can imagine them to be. Framing 
them with the lines of our wants, the unsaid 
and unanswered needs. We tell and we do not
tell; the yearnings are always difficult,

no words come, they balk at the touch.
If I may be direct, how will you respond?
If I tell you I wonder how it will be
to be right across you, the table meant
for two? It is possible.

All these exchanges happening while sharing
a metaphysical table. So it is this, we
have no bodies, no faces, no names; but
how the words flow. Moving and always
in a state of unsettled be-coming.

The silk road can be seen from outside
our window; a candle flickers, you unfold
a table napkin; I search for a word trying
to find an excuse to look at you.
Someone comes close, asks what we'll have
for dinner. 

trace

More likely than not, the Japanese
got it right. About the traces
in our lives--our very long lives, 
perhaps, very long till our souls 
grow very tired and very old.
                             And 
more likely, Buddha, as well,
got it right. About the traces
in our lives--our very long lives,
perhaps, very long till our souls
grow very tired and very old.
                            

Preface

If you were to devote only one time to read 
a piece of Hegel's, take the Preface: it may be
the actual body of what he may have meant: how 
always it appears in the beginning of any book
yet, not the first thing to be written.
What he found 
was a horizon where conflicts settle themselves 
to remain settled as conflicts. A horizon 
we keep moving towards, in spite ourselves, 
we cannot ever reach. He died, the book 
unfinished. Might as well be. 

crossing a body of water

Something always happens when 
water crosses over another 
body of water

This body over an ocean which
is really merely a river
of time 

Memory reaching out as far
its hand could go holding on 
the last shore it has been

Water crossing water
dreams
staying the same and not

Who can tell 
water from another
water?

The difference in time makes
worlds apart and presences
similar to ghosts

We keep
out of fear or love
both

















    

Room

Consider a room with two doors
One facing east the other west
Both meeting at the same 

Room where one meets another
Where there is no Other
Where the floor between is

A border that is not---
A space undefined
A place familiar

frames of mind

I don't mean the flowers, I say, when I meant how the day was. We were at her little yard, a patch of grass trying to populate in spite lack of water and too much sun; it has a few herbs here and there, spots of turmeric and also what resembles dill. Not too long ago, I helped tend her basil. The jasmine tree, flowering this time of the year, has a series of firefly lights. Twinkling now and making mellow glows, making being in the yard feel it is those years again. Letting some part of the evening seem to wait for the sweet telltale scent of pot.  

She brings a dainty white pot of oolong tea; on her other hand, a book she is about to finish: about a man proving evil in the world. I am cynical about it: evil needs no proving; but keep peace anyway: she most likely is as cynical about poetry.

I think instead it is quite an evening. Remembering the time we had wine and talked--while embers used to grill the fish for dinner slowly turned to ash--about things forgotten now. What did we talk about?

This evening it is about a possible trip to C: the guide says white sand beach, waterfalls, springs. There again the pictures of sunsets, horizons and outrigger boats. In essence they mean leaving. I notice the slice of red watermelon on a plate placed on the table for me and the palm-size local papaya for her. I think about what I might not have for a long time soon. What we try not to talk about.

The slight headache I have had earlier returns. A breeze passes and the bamboo chimes on her doorway make their water sounds. I pet one of the dogs. It is quite an evening. I shove the rest of the papers and things to do in a full drawer in mind.

on devotion

M has two children, two sons, both of them
with autism. Because they live in an island 
at least thrice removed from the capital
and once deluged (it took a night 

in a ferry for her to attend
a poetry reading where we first met)
there were no centres for the boys. 
She and her husband must have schooled 

themselves on love
and forgiving the universe, and devotion.
Also pride 
for their sons.

Then the two of them built a small school
in the island where afternoons the boys
play at the shore and wade waters.
M takes photos of them and tells proudly
of little, but large, accomplishments.

Like pointing a fruit the boy wants to eat.

She writes poems about the largeness of love.
Serenity
and gratitude.
I cannot admire her enough for bravery.

These days she and the husband trains
CrossFit in anticipation of what is known
but unsaid. The boys are becoming teens. 

Miracle Fair

Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.

An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.

One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it’s backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.

An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.

Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.

A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.

A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.

A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer than six fingers,
it still has more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.

An additional miracle, as everything is additional:
the unthinkable
is thinkable.

[by Wislawa Szymborska; translated by Joanna Trzeciak]

world moving

1
When we lie down seeing the sky, 
we may as well be standing 
from another angle; the sky is sea foam.
Such ways the world can be

seen, different eyes: punto de vista.

2
The call, sooner than expected, arrived
yesterday; half the request granted.
What it meant we knew from the beginning.
In the beginning, we knew 

different and the same: punto de vista.

among the lasts

Let me tell you about my restlessness, the uncertainty
of my leaving because dearly I wanted to that I am 
afraid the dividing line that will be the news. Two worlds.

At the moment, there is nothing beyond September
those days that are steps toward a cliff of two bridges
one must I take given the word. What word. Not one 

of us now says a thing, both waiting, while things away
making endless strings of short travels: points A to B;
A to C; A to D etcetera where the sea is a moving part.

Roger says I am ready now, I am. Am I? Of course,
there is no better time than now. This year no longer
than necessarily so being a turnstile in the middle

this road that is now as lived. We do not say what needs
not be said. I hold you close in mornings that I repeatedly
memorize even as I know I cannot forget.

when i will meet you

When finally I will meet you, 
I imagine there will be 
nothing to utter and many
distances to cross. 
Each of us a world
too long alone on its own,
making and conversing
with bird shadows on walls.
We will be right across
each other on the table,
wondering how it all
has come to this, singular
moment of meeting.
To begin the real knowing
is to begin the crossing 
from whichever previously
we know as real or unreal.
How will I say the first word.
How will we begin

Two Days Away

It is always possible to write 
about seemingly random things.
The way the mind a pastiche.

At the moment I think about where
are my glasses? The light is harsh.
Also, the motorcycle key.

The beach wonderful today. 
The humidity and heat in this country.
Yesterday I dropped by at Ozee's 

met the new woman, the fifth one 
I've known since meeting the Pole 
eight years ago. Who says 

the house is empty. At the moment
she is gone for a week; and not
one of us talks about the possibility.

Although sometimes she says
"before you leave." 

I am afraid, sometimes, to even think
about it: leaving or staying.
Although the two Germans are marking

each day that takes them closer,
fostered local dogs in tow, 
to finally returning home.

what comes next

What comes next is not unknown. It is 
as clear as a clear sky day, sky like glass
blue like you can see through it and what lies
beyond, those blue green fields of cornflowers
a tree, a rainbow, an eternal outdoor
picnic like we dreamed to do on Sundays.
What Sunday-school picture books all say.

What comes next is not unknown. All told
from the pulpit, how the world will become
dust, like flesh into ash, the questions.
Only the living left bereft.

My papers are sent. The board to convene.
Meanwhile. 
I pretend not to pay attention 
to the arthritic bloom in my finger joints.

When I was younger and younger, 
palm to palm my fingers could mimic
the grace of a swimming fish's tail.
I could move one or both ears...

Such feat for a twelve year old!

What comes next is not unknown. 
I tell my dog we will see the vet on Sunday.
Meanwhile I recover from my own bout
with flu. The days are numbered.
What comes next is not unknown.

Only the heart is scared. Brave only by
closing its eyes. To leap into the known.

We must have met the same woman on the same day

An hour shy of a full day, I find the note you tacked on the wall
It has a picture of a tree where you met her, the woman sometimes
Called Fate. I reckon you noted your conversation about the same

Time I read in public, while accompanied by a painting, poem
I've written about her, and the bush, and the snake. Such happenstance
Did you ask her why she stayed where she'd go

Not for the first time I see the wall and knock at the cosmos divide: 
You, there
I, here

And our notes free on a boat bridge under moon and wind.


























          

Fate

When you meet a gypsy, on the road you begin to wonder
at your own rootedness, the way you have chosen to 
never stray at the straw path the maps gestured at with the stars.
They sometimes call it destiny.
Although whether it is the meeting her or the crossroad 
you may never know, standing at the foot of some bridge
you have constructed in mind. Fate

has a way of being many things at once strange and familiar
an open face of someone once dreamed about.
She has a tambourine, a ukelele, and a stray dog.
You have a compass, a dream, and a fear.

When you meet a gypsy, you wonder 
at your own rootedness. They sometimes call it
destiny.

If You Hire a Poet to Draw a Map

He will take liberties with the land. He’ll unwind rivers that
offend him. He’ll move mountain ranges that get in his way. He’ll
expand the coastline to make room for more otters and seals. He’ll
slide the equator a dozen degrees north so the winters won’t be
quite so harsh. He’ll rename major cities after the lovers of his
past. On the east coast there’s Penelope, so plump and polluted.
And Melinda in the west, awash in fragrant flowers. He’s likely to
add a few states. Some as small as a cafe. Others span great swaths
of the open sea. He’ll sketch in highways where it pleases him. The
black ones are designed for families and grandmothers traveling
alone. The green and orange roads are not for novices. They twist
and turn. Go underground for miles. Pass right over lakes. Then
the asphalt ends. You get out of your car. A farmer greets you by a
fence. He hands you a carrot. You ask the obvious question. And
he replies, Yes. This is the end of the orange road.

—David Shumate

The ways we go

Two nights ago, I dreamed of pulling a tooth---
two, an incisor and a molar.  There would have been
third, but in the dream it stopped being loose---

and I woke up distraught.  Dreams of teeth

are not good in this country of dreamers, they mean
death.  I spent the rest of the hours watching
for light.  Morning, she tells me, 

death in the family, but it could also mean simply

change

exactly the way I was told the first time
a reader explained the cards before reading.
A transition, she had said, gesturing at a cup.

What do I know?  What do I know?

I called my mother in the dark of morning
she replied, pray.
In the corner I watch the stillness and the quiet

Who knows?  Who knows?

J-- had a stroke of luck right after our meeting, 
and passed away.  A woman with terminal cancer
brought her oxygen tank to listen to a poetry reading.

The Danish neighbour hit the truck at the freeway

the same day my new motorcycle arrived.
His wife and months-old child I had greeted just that morning,
and she had spoken kindly to the dogs.

Who knows?  Who knows?

There is an envelope upstairs waiting for the last paper.
There could be a leaving, but do I dare 
finally go?