forty-so degrees

The temperature still has its cool hand
pressed flat against the surface of air.
Though the sun is bright
and gusts come not infrequently.
Dog walkers are out, their dogs patient
with the slow stroll; more lovers
are out nights. Their soft warm glow. 

I work continuously for days now,
trudging 
over translations and retranslations,
that the sun also keeps longer hours.
Outside the large windows, there may be
no indication of evening, not even 
when sometimes I feel my palms cold.

There is an end, though not in sight.
There will be summer, though not yet.
At the moment, here, 
forsythias in bloom.

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.
                            

Love

On better days it is easy to remember
as though never forget
                       love
a clear thing
like the awareness of a lovely day
like this
without that cat across the street
                       black and passing

(ants in this world) a long goodbye 9

I can count now on one hand
The number of days left on this little island
Of sweets. Days the colour of turmeric.
(It rains just now, wet monsoon has come)

This is a place of hope, no matter
What its people say. More than half its year
The bamboo chimes hanging on my front door
Sounds of water. The shore half hour away.

When the breeze blows on your beloved's hair
And when you see grown men and women
Come out at downpour, play with their children,
You will know why 

Tired white men find their way here
To rest at last from the world at large.
But I leave. By the cosmos' grace, I leave.
(An ant's work what we do. So little
         
To add to so much more.)
And two days before I leave, I shall ferry
Visit a spider woman in these islands, 
Who wrote poetry of memory, being, becoming

It shall be a moment in her herbs garden
Where there will be no promise
Only a doing by understanding
This so much work, this so much work

More than an entire ant's life can do. 

(ants in this world) a long goodbye 9

I can count now on one hand
The number of days left on this little island
Of sweets. Days the colour of turmeric.
(It rains just now, wet monsoon has come)

This is a place of hope, no matter
What its people say. More than half its year
The bamboo chimes hanging on my front door
Sounds of water. The shore half hour away.

When the breeze blows on your beloved's hair
And when you see grown men and women
Come out at downpour, play with their children,
You will know why 

Tired white men find their way here
To rest at last from the world at large.
But I leave. With the cosmos' grace, I leave.
(An ant's work what we do. So little
         
To add to so much more.)
And two days before I leave, I shall ferry
Visit a spider woman in these islands, 
Who wrote poetry of memory, being, becoming

It shall be a moment in her herbs garden
Where there will be no promise
Only a doing by understanding
This so much work, this so much work

More than an entire ant's life can do. 

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.

To whom are we writing for

Possibly the sense is the same: all of these--
Us writing on a wall: millennials and those 
Past who scribbled their names on slates 
If only to say "I was here". Or "Joni was here".
Some form of validation knowing our own passing.
Finite, are we not
Deliberate to leave a trace of ourselves here?
Evidence of existence; fossil of memories...

(I have only sung alone in public once:
holding a guitar borrowed from Music Majors;
in the middle of a kiosk, love then had audacity
to call everyone's attention as introduction:
"Hi everyone, listen"--did I say it that way
I can no longer remember--"I have a song for..."
The girl blushed but remained on her seat--
I think now, it was probably out of confusion
or public embarrassment--to endure

Such shameless proclamation. THEN a string 
Strummed SNAPPED.) Who can remember that 
On their own? Recall names, retell the story,
Laugh at appropriate moments in the telling?
It has been years before this: This
Writing on the wall about it.

a very long wait

I think it is not fear of death itself as much as
Fear of dying; death is a given, the psyche
Attuned to it since time beyond memory: all 

Archetypes of travel (companions, fellow solo
sojourners, boats, terminals, stop-overs...) 
Everyday, departures are what have come to be 

known like the pace of one's own breathing--
But who can tell of true arrivals?
Everyone has ideas, some more convincing

Than others; what may be more fearful is 
Living: that very long wait, so long 
We become desperate lovers of life itself.














  

a clearing in the woods

Let me tell you a secret. This

          is my clearing in the woods

                       shared only by you.
          
                               Three years now.


I have grown a little too old for public 
announcements, the way younger ones have made 
out of the internet: a potted plant, a garden, 
a landscape, a directed trail to the woodshed 
by the lake right after the painted sign 
on reclaimed wood: Welcome Crowd 
tail as they hunt in search of themselves.

Consider the woods at the back of my house
through the screened door opened by keypad.
A password uttered in silent type.
The woods, metaphors of the real: the steel gate
needs fixing; the few garden herbs that survived
the yard onslaught of a playful young dog; 
list of things to do including translations

of poems for anthology, necessary visit
to the bank, call from the secretary, 
a last stretch of familiarity. I walk through
the woods throughout the day 

with some moments of clarity as when 
being in transit between actual places,
as when I hold my oldest dog 
who (I am afraid) I might not see again.
As when I allow myself to be fragile 

to a woman's love. As when I sit, seemingly 
alone in this private clearing in the woods 
in quiet company with a fellow soul.

this morning

Is it the certainty 
of loss that keeps us
going? That certain
kind of lack

kind of incompleteness
completes us. 

For what is "fullness"
and "perfection" 
in utter satisfaction?
But unsatisfactory.

Our lives are completed
by a sense of incomplete.
Perfection 
because imperfect. 

Else, a life dormant.
A life inert. 

So continuously we sing
memories of wounds.
Old old scars 
never heals. 

Or we pause on moments
perfect like this:
early morning sun 
through curtains to 
the floor, dog beside, 
detection book on lap, 
earl grey tea like new 
beginning, local bread 
and feta, some birds. 
A love letter
written to be given
sometime in the future.

Which will be 
not very long from now. 
As I anticipate 
the news anytime, 
sending me to another
place away
from here. 

McKinley

1
What is in this country of struggle.

2
Y the German who, in the beginning
arrived merely to accompany the wife, 
now asks to stay another year. This.
This place no longer so terrible 
as once thought. There is a book

3 
Of poems in English & Spanish on my table.
A gift for them 
on their last Christmas here. This.

4
Why do we expect never to see each other again.

5
There is a Filipina who married a German.
And I want to try
to understand how they found each other
between two languages.
Y the German says are you leaving next year?

6
Yes.

7
Next year comes with many things
I try not to think when I come home at dusk,
when the dogs and I walk after dinner
and the night wind is crisp. 

8
So many to be left behind: such need pack light.
(She)
And the dogs (W the eldest, does she know
that these days when I pat her I say goodbye).
This, among others.

9
Dogs of this country cannot survive such cold.

10
Y the German says so very long. 
I do not continue the talk.
She and I barely talk 
of these things.
Y the German asks what about sex.

11
What is in this country of struggle.

12
Walking home dusks these days, 
I try to memorise the turmeric sky
and the shadow of a coconut tree. 
(And like a scene from a bad movie) I find myself
refusing to write.

life as lived

Posted a photo of the wild ones in the water--the loved dogs
in their eternal summer. The photo is all 
bright and light and shore and water
and too easy laughter,
it does not tell all.

after the party is better

After the party is better
at night when only empty glasses
remain crowding together
on tables being cleared

There, a few careless stains 
on tablecloths for what spilled
and broke of so much cheer

The band is done
all dancing, too, as guests 
gone
memory of a good night:

waiters making sounds
stacking plates etc. minutes.
They too, very soon gone.

How much conversation
is left, is to go on--is how much 
night we have left.

I think I will prefer now
after a brunch party

Still sunny, we still
can have rest of the day 
together yet. 
                  

                                     photo by A. Schneidt

ride along with the universe

The entire day with rain. I remembered my colleague yesterday saying love the rain;
so I sent a video Singing in the Rain and remembered too late it is about love; and
didn't the colleague tell me in a question the wife was having an affair? The entire

day with rain. News in a long list came in, drenched, through the front door. A list of
too many unnamed: dead children washed ashore, refugees, the world a square.
S sent an email from Singapore, saying his non-fiction on Philippine boxers is done

also, how is my writing. Should I say the manuscript is done and now I hear nothing.
On its stead, I spend an entire day with rain solving math equations imaginary
problems with clear solutions--how about children caught in war and un-leaving?

There is a Simic upstairs: a child running with scissors. 
A new piece I need to write for a public reading for teenagers on the 13th. 
A party faring a dear friend well into retirement. 
The book review of a first compendium of local literature long overdue. 
A module to leave for when I leave. 
And places here I have yet to be in.
A yearlong farewell; till home again...

...sometimes I dream of empty. That sound of water, that wind, that sky... 

but until then, not yet, not yet

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.

Solitude

photo by J. Pinzon

This kind of solitude makes the hours long. 
I take what I can take: a passing thought,
a banana ripe in its own time, a part of a part
of a scene playing out outside the window.

The summer is both long and short.
We check our calendars, look for moments 
to get away: from where, to where
Who knows? It seems

only the plants are truly unconcerned.
Quiet and steady, palms always open
for both light and dark.

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.

For a colleague, on his passing

The next day everything else remain in place.
No single death can move a sheet of paper 
held by paperweight on your table, waiting for your signature. 
It is a common enough thing such tangible patience
steady and all of us passing.  We sing anyway 
as much to ourselves as to you who must be amused by now.

The Visit

after St. Francis and the Sow



Francis comes over to visit and there is none of the Spectacle
before and after him, mob frenzy in madness in dance parading
a black crowned man to his death, a dark child with burnt world 
on its hand.  The horde waits for him in patient hunger,
hollow ecstasy.  Father! Father! they call out to him.  

Father! Father!             From a distance

he touches them, oh he touches them
 as he once touched the sow.

The Kamasutra of Kindness (Position No. 3)

The Kamasutra of Kindness
Position No. 3



It’s easy to love
through a cold spring
when the poles
of the willows
turn green
pollen falls like
a yellow curtain
and the scent of
Paper Whites
clots
the air
but to love for a lifetime
takes talent
you have to mix yourself
with the strange
beauty of someone
else

wake each morning
for 72,000
mornings in
a row so
breathed and
bound and
tangled
that you can hardly
sort out
your arms
and
legs

you have to
find forgiveness
in everything
even ink stains
and broken
cups

you have to be willing to move through
life
together
the way the long
grasses move
in a field
when you careen
blindly toward
the other
side

there’s never going to be anything
straight or predictable
about your path
except the
flattening
and the springing
back

you just go on walking for years
hand in hand
waist deep in the weeds
bent slightly forward
like two question
marks
and all the while it

burns
my dear
it burns beautifully above
you
and goes on
burning
like a relentless
sun




by Mary Mackey