light

The conversation tonight was about light. How temporal it is. Like body, like breath. Like how two people meet. Living, and then, also, leaving. Both. Always happening at the same time. This mad provision 

we call here, now, what exists, merely passing in time & space, brushing, lingering, lingered, in transit, a longing, through the vastness this presence, phenomenon, is-ness, then gone, to where? from where? extending, to nowhere, elsewhere, liminal, between, nuance, distance, distances, horizon, eternal.
The commonest road has no name. It is a road that is not a road. It is light. That stretches. A beam, a bridge, crossing, reaching us at the selvedges, where we are on the folds of happenstance, wrinkle in space, in time, breathing each other, are you there? am i there? here i am. here you are.

the steady rhythm

There is a steady rhythm in the pulse of the universe.
This I believe 
At the same time I believe

The necessary erratic erranty of the cosmos.
The Great Barrier Reef is dead
And the thousands of salmon continue living

Their lives all about the long return.
So ours, also, must be.

From where to where, from whom to whom, the definitions
May not be necessary.
What is it that we truly long for?

That which is repeated over and over lying between
All the lines and names and breaths
Including the time we stare at the seemingly 

Boundless sea.
Have we moved enough yet? 

Farther or closer who is to know.

a matter of time

And does he tell you he will return?
In what words, scattered like rain or
Clumped together like flowers in bouquet,
Predictable as the swinging of a boy
Just small enough for the set, too old
The year after this next. In what words

Does he tell you he will return?

I move through water filled with pansies
And daylight that spills into the night,
People without colour in a language
Familiar yet strange; how do I tell her

I will return?

She waves her hand, says name no month.
There is a garden beside her, constant 
Sunshine above, occasional rains, 
Eternal stars. The dogs lay close to her.
I dream.
Watching the night here remain light.

no water but space

What separates us now is space.
Like air   like blank   like nothingness
Not a void   I think  for it too must have
Some vague directions pointing which way
One must go 

Home for now is a transitionary word
Much like the lengthened stay at airports
I have nearly forgotten how it feels like
The not quite entirely have moved in

What sense is it
The mind always knowing this is not the place
Even though it is where the body is
And will be   for years

I try not to think of her warmth 
Realise it has always been this way--a distance
Metaphorical or otherwise

Here  it is the tail end of summer
At 8 PM the sky remains light
I have not yet looked up the skies at night
Knowing there are no stars

So far away from her

(the slow remaining days) a long goodbye 7

And how do women understand goodbye?
I do not know how to comfort
Someone who says she is alright. 
Do we not take one for one's word?
I tell her repeatedly I am leaving,
settle as many things as her buoys

She will have to learn to navigate
Absences, this beautiful woman 
Who reminds me of my own weaknesses.

Wiping the plate last night, she 
Suddenly cried. And we both know. 

It is very quiet now where I am. 
Morning sun gold after early rain.
The dogs are asleep. I am having tea.
This afternoon I will talk about 
Literature. And Times.

In the last moment of departures,
Like chess, unsentimental, I step.
And how do women understand goodbye?
Looking at the disappearing figure.

(thursday night) a long goodbye 5

For whom is the goodbye? I ask myself now
Finally understanding why they all ask

My consistent refusal for despedida
No send-offs, I said, No one is leaving.

Even so I think of returns.
Knowing all these are leaving me

As I leave them. 
I do not want to sleep, wanting only

To keep awake. Lengthen, possibly, time.
This Thursday night longer and longer still.

There is a date waiting for me. A door.
An airplane. 

A long goodbye

I have few weeks left before final leave-taking.
These weeks pass in slow motion but pass they do 
Just the same. The list of things to do has 
A certainty in it: the number of banks, the emails, 

The visits to dentist, and barber whom I will see 
Twice more before having to find someone like him
Again in another country (though I doubt it

Someone who already knows, by seeing me, 
Exactly what to do). A poem has been written about 
Having the same barber throughout one's life, 

A kind of faithfulness and understanding of being.
I anticipate on the last visit the appearance 
Shall be the same though I tell him 

To cut as short as possible and he might wonder 
But not ask. The scissors and blade will move
In the same way. The look on the mirror 

And the sound of "thanks", the tip before the door 
The same. Of the list, only the dentist will know 
From the way a tooth submits to certainties.

the space between cities

The space between cities is a body of distance
hardly translatable into a map we can pretend
able to transverse by way of roads and rails,
ports and piers cohering so-called boundaries

of what is there and here and then and now as
east and west and north and south referring to
sun and wind and seasons, the way we attempt
landmarking passages if only to remember all 

places we've been, also those never been to 
except heard by name or gestured at in story.
The space between is body of distance, tunnel
lighted dimly: memory and dream, both palpable

to skin, real enough to hear the laugh from
a mind's photograph of one's own ageless self 
in a moment everlasting. Who else is there?
an entire library of snapshots handwritten in

cursive with names, some clearer than others, 
invoked often as bridges over which one's own 
mind and body travels, loop of a map a place
only in river-spaces crossing between cities.

the child

so we are patient with god
who has own time
mysterious

something neither one can
measure by logic
affection

longer than mortal patience
length of time
by breaths

or by turn of tides seasons 
revolutions of peoples
planets...

some parts of this country
god is a child
who laughs

is good is teasing is letting
us run afraid of our own
limitations

early walk with dog

                                                for W


We still see the stars in the morning
because we get up before daybreak.
Sometimes we mistake it for night. 
My dog, what does he think
when he sits as I get our tie,
open the door and begin our walk 
no longer as long it used to be. 
We both are getting old.
He, more longanimous than I.

Metaphors of walking frighten me.
A long singular walk
at times with company
staying as long as they could.
In the end...

I realise this morning
how terribly frightened I am.
In spite of faith and knowledge
things have a way of turning
alright. Of course, 

the stars are there in the sky 
daybreak or night.

The Grecian Urn

Finally, I turned off the TV 
getting up after sleeping through a rerun
an old series from more than a decade ago.
Two detectives--a man and a woman--in
futile search of truth. In the long run
of course it no longer mattered.
What once preoccupied the young.

Student activists who raised fists
against superstructures, convinced
to change the world by sheer willpower
and their term papers. Romantics,
the only kind who could not not believe in

love. W, who was asleep on the rug 
close to the couch, woke up and followed me
to the room. The day was over. 
I opened two windows to let in the night.
On the bedside table, close to the light
the still-unmarked end of term essays
remaining certain of tomorrow.

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.

what comes in the end

what comes in the end after beer.
we talk about multi-modality
how so many different things mean
different on their own and different
when happening simultaneously.
the mind always attempts to mean.
platforms can change. so are worlds.
even though they essentially remain
the same. what comes in the end
after beer. i take the slow walk home. 
feeling the lightness of the new
walking boots she gave me. dark blue 
the colour of deep sea. and quiet.
some forms of serenity. a thought
came over talk asking is this the way
it feels before dying? ha ha ha.
about half a year left before leaving.
we did not toast. he is leaving too.
scotland. i name two states, where
the wind blows i go. the cosmos.
she remains to wait. i am already
thinking of coming home to her.
where really home is. we did not
toast. i come home walking slow
the sky is november too clear.
beautiful women so beautiful it hurts
the way one feels the loss of many
things. time and other lives.
this one now being what is had. 
my dogs call out from feet away
sensing my return. some loves
are perfect that way no matter
how unperfect the receiver.
what comes in the end after
beer. a sweet kind of sadness.
the kind also known as gratitude.

crossings

 

Comes the bird
touching water
shore of another 
same world.

right across

Never enough time

Never enough time to be a mother
Never enough time to be a father
Never enough time for a child
Who grows out of itself by tomorrow

The child will be gone
Replaced by a woman
Replaced by a man
Replaced by a stranger 
Come tomorrow

Never enough time to be wife
Never enough to be husband
To be lover 
To be child
To be constant
Come tomorrow

Come tomorrow
Come stranger

Who does not fear tomorrow?

length of a year

the logic is to measure as many things
                  to live the finite life, it's end
                      at the very end certainly known
                            even as certainly unseen.

the body feels it for us, receiving the Quiet. cell
                  by cell as if room by room, coming in
                       door after door in this poor temple 
                            of soul. the young do not hear

yet the Quiet's footsteps echoing in the wind.
                   but come years of footfall after footfall
                        one finally recognises the visitor 
                             has been in all along. the logic is

to measure as many things to forewarn life
                   the finiteness of every moment that needs
                       be lived. sense the silhouette passing
                             minute after minute quantifiable

ultimately by calendar. but how long the length of 
                   a passing year for uncertain waiting?
                       the letter gave no promises, only half
                            affirmative gesture, the word "about"

encompassing. so one continues to move the motor
                    of day-to-day, no certain number
                        except what wind presses on
                            one's cheek, what dogs in gentle

wisdom knows, the way they keep close. in the way
                    one's mind attempts to see an entire
                        year more, the whole turn around sun
                            from now, but sees only part of it.
                            
I rather not have yet the leaving a form, a body, a face 
                    as number of remaining days, of date, hour
                        of plane departure because it is inevitable.
                            I rather at this moment let it remain

a spectre she and I would let in in time, but not yet, 
                    not yet. at the moment, let it stay
                        a welcomed guest at the front door.






                    

the long drive from Saavedra

And it comes to me again.

Even not yet absolute, 
the one remaining 
year in this country. 

From Germany, J sends
congratulations saying
his own return after

Denmark and torn Israel. 
Till we meet again, I say
motioning the years 

near a decade or so. Or
so. G is now rarely
mentioned, left

(after retirement) several
pages back. In Spain. 
In other points elsewhere.

The marching continues
off from coast to coast.
In middle, Raymund

takes his off-road motor
to return to his kids--
a last save before

they are all grown.
G had always said
about the passing

of grace, nothing 
permanent except what
the moment has. 

And it comes to me again.

Even not yet absolute, 
the one remaining 
year in this country. 

During the not-long-enough

drive from Saavedra

to her warmth.

And it comes to me again. 

Nights 

we hold as long as we can.

the needs we know and not know

So I have spoken with G* and I am to begin the papers
Today; it is much sooner than expected, but just so.
The half of the year next year a blank slate now for a time.
Even when the expected comes, it looms and the heart
Shivers knowing of no certainties. A number of places

At the tip of the tongue the cosmos to decide. It says
Five years. The leap of trust must we do.
Even for the uncertain, there is such a thing as faith.

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.