do you sail?

The past few weeks I have been thinking of rowing.
There are two rivers nearby, large 
at this time of the year. 
There is much need to release and attempt to draw 
out into a clear line what has been repeatedly said.

I have stopped taking walks and will have to resume.
I no longer have my dogs.
I sleep and dream and wake up as though 
I haven't slept at all.

St. Patrick's may be a day with a reason.
Maybe one day we will happen to meet, you whiskey 
on hand, me, on the rocks.
And because I do not believe in therapists, 
I wrestle with own shadows,

Fill up the to-do list and bed with heaviness.
Sometimes the day begins with a clear mind
which means nothing and I come down to make tea,
which means coming through a number of doors 
that entering or exiting becomes uncertain.

a dark impenetrable forest

It is raining now where I am. 
The heater hums, the gray will not leave
until the weeks of winter will finally
exhaust themselves. In the meantime

the tea, the sound of rain, the days
in the calendar filling up
like things to do that march on and on.
I sense my right eye stooping now
like an old working dog. It means
the glasses will have to be changed.

In the meantime, how to talk about
translation? When everything 
we manifest are truly incomplete.
A student, armed with practice and theory, 
argues: translation is always a gain.
In time

one will know gentleness; and why 
the horizon is what it is: something
perceivable, what we can move towards
eternally, as we would a dream, 
as we would each breath. Always beyond. 

There are many ways to live.
Even the one who ruminates drinks tea,
the bag possibly packed in a factory 
filled with underpaid men and women,
children too, in some developing country 
never far beyond.

All in an open circle.
Echos-monde.
The water from this rain.
Me. You. What the limitations I have
make of You other than the You
that you actually live. What we imagine
of ourselves, of each other. 
To one another.

In the meantime, I write a letter
to a You.
Letter without postal stamp, physical 
address, even a legible name. As though
believing the tangible is an organic case 
always subject to decay, unable to contain
what we are truly trying to reach.

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 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?

The Pacific

I am reading Thomas Centolella         a thin book of quiet         size only slightly larger than my palms         that hold in the same way         many things unsaid between bridges of things mundane         Yesterday         I had new eyeglasses to see more clearly and I bought                 her a ring         feeling not for the first time         Certainty         Arriving home         the little dog sick and a next-day appointment with the vet I hope we will not need         It rained heavily last night         sun shining briefly this morning         sweet         for the local roses someone from the office gave         for the garden I will have more time         next week while everyone else in this Christmas country         I hope to cross a sea         an ocean         with her to an island of migrating flocks         In the meantime there is an ocean's love         a happenstance at the exact same time Thomas Centolella writes The Pacific.



The Pacific



A thought has been rising and falling
in the grayness of the season, 
like a freighter in heavy fog,
appearing and disappearing:
How is it we never tire of dreaming
we can be autonomous as the sea?
Or be among the swimmers
holding their own against the undertow?
And the body surfers encourage us,
the way they submit to the powerful flux
and are buoyant, transported
by what could just as easily destroy them.

I keep thinking of that woman in Godard's
Two Or Three Things I Know About Her.
Real love, she said, leaves us changed afterwards.
What happens after that, she didn't say.
I remember you were grateful, as so many are
given the chance to move on to something better.
Fog lifting, the tide comes voluptuous as a great love,
and tastes bitter, like what comes after.
Stunning turbulence.  Like a brilliant smile
that keeps edging closer, and from which
I edge away.

what the sun says does not say

What the sun says does not say
the morning is something else entirely

How gold is the golden this 
morning of your birth, another year again

unfolding.

April 7th

At a certain angle, one can see the hours
stretching in an attempt at eternity.
The breeze prods, so does the sunshine.
The sound of water always never too far.
So, too, the sounds of conversations
between strangers attempting kindness.
Only the dogs are not disturbed.
And perhaps, too, the little children 
sitting on toy carts, the wheels rolling.
They are as aware of eternity, 
lounging contentedly at the front yard, 
as the weeds themselves who, seeing 
the gardener, keeps on growing anyway.

white

the mornings are white.  and i try to shake off the remains from last night.  difficult when even sleep cannot make the forgetting.  when the waking is by a dream where i was calling in a makeshift

bedroom in a makeshift house.  the entire scene breezy noon, blaring bright.  the bare walls, raw plywood.  and plastered, bond paper size cut-out pictures of newspaper comic strip cartoons. the likes of peanuts. also a 1980s rock and roll star with a large nose. the pictures appeared random.  but 

possibly not, they all have clearly drawn noses.  in the dream i was showing someone the room.  and disturbed by the sight of the pictures, i called for her, i called aloud and i wake up in 

a morning white.  the curtains drawn, the room light with tempered sunlight.  i find myself in bed alone.

i woke up shivering

Any one can comment about the strange weather these days.  One country can talk about their drought and heat wave, another about intense cold, these happening all at once.  It is the middle of January, 

and none of the things we used to know apply.  In this humid country, for instance, closer to the ring of fire than others, typhoons are keeping themselves at  bay, watching the too many dead and the grief-

stricken. Now coldness has come, temperatures dropping lower than people can imagine.  In the mountains, animals are dying and the whiff of their death like pollen everywhere, she said, 

commenting on my state over an elaborate breakfast of fluids.  I had woken up in the middle of the dark morning, shivering with fever. Now she looks outside the window and listens to the sound of the river.  

it can wait

What will 
a sixty-eight-year-old man do
with a four-year-old son
in a country 
more humid than
wherever  he's ever been?
See how he sits now
alone on the porch
sipping coffee
his young wife gone.
He must be thinking
of something 

or waiting.

two skies

east, daylight is rising.  dew and drops glisten from this dawn's heavy rain.  but west, on the other window--my writing seat is in the middle---gray.  in half an hour i will call the secretary, i will keep away half the day.  i have been gone too long from many places: how we can only exist once at a time.  sun spills on the floor.  the sound of an airplane leaving or arriving: perhaps both.


















 

ways to see

1.  i met A* in a poetry reading, she has two sons, both of them with autism, and she writes poetry.  on her page, she posts Mary Oliver and photos of her sons.  recently she tells about doing a little grocery with the boys, and posts another photo of them playing with water at their front yard.  

2.  in a documentary about children with autism, i thought about their parents and the strength of unconditional love.  maybe reasons had been asked, but expectedly no direct answers were given.  still, the carry on.

3.  a student wrote on her paper that faith is learning the imperfections and still believing in it.  i wrote nothing on the margins.

4.  when i was growing up, about eight or nine, there was a boy who was about four or five years my senior.  he was always in bed and his large frame always carried around by the small woman who was his mother.  i always wondered why he wouldn't just move himself, always wondered why his mother was always so kind.  it took many years before i understood the kindness of a big heart.  and love was not even yet mentioned.

5.  in many torn countries, there remains being a mother.  when they tell stories about carrying and giving birth and raising children in extreme conditions, it is unimaginable.  the strength of a human heart.  

6.  in the early of mornings, when flying flocks can still be seen on the sky and the new sunlight is soft, some young mothers in the neighborhood can be seen carrying their babies for sun, for vitamin D, i am reminded my own paucity. 

bookends of a weekday

you come home at the end of the day
to a welcome by dogs like children

in a way that you will 
almost forget the dark of morning

waking at 4 am to the crisp outdoors
with their own halfdreams

and the race to leave this little island
for the bustling city two bridges away

through the glass windows you see
the silvering skyline

the graying strait
the coming tide



            



                                         shane, 23 june 2013









 

morning walk

on gray mornings like this, i remember some place else.  although remembering could mean a whole different, whole new thing.  not the kind that re-collects the past, and assembling it into some kind of fiction in the prose of thinking.

in some other place, it is also gray like this.  maybe also in the middle of june, or the beginning.  and there is always the promise of rain.  maybe there is also a cool breeze, the kind that partly bites and i am wearing a sweater, the reversible kind.

when it is gray and quiet like this, i imagine walking to a place somewhere else.  the time would stretch into a stillness, the sun would never rise.  keeping low like this, behind the clouds that are gray.

there will a few trucks on the road and their cargoes heading to destinations far.  still, a number of cars, glassed, just as isolated.  there are a few wet leaves on the road, a few branches that had fallen.  and if paid closest attention to, a hint of salt in the breeze. 

i imagine remembering a dock at the far end of the road.  and a bar where one could order a hard drink.  there, there are no mornings, just dusk.  and the at windows, a skywide picture of an eternal sunrise or sunset.

at seven in the morning

the curtains are not drawn and dark and so monsoon light comes in.  grey, as it always is in June.  by standards, it is already late and W* is licking my hand with the patient look of a toilet-trained dog.  i will be leaving again in less than 24 hours.  arrangements have been made.  all that is needed, to pack by number:  two places, two different temperatures.  after the ISSI and the R*, i will have to remember the tickets for the musical play.

companionable silence

companionable silence is perhaps one of the most beautiful, warm things.  when the moment has rested itself; and there is no need to fill anything with words.  (you are just there across) i, here on the couch, under the reading light.  the dogs napping just beside.

it is not with everyone we can have companionable silence with.  more often is that sense of need to find comfort in words, holding on to them like life buoys for safety, like security blankets we wrap ourselves with.  like scaffolds we use to support moments.  

perhaps it is the fear of silence.  or the fear of thoughts--the other's or our own.
perhaps it is the fear of distance from the other.  or the fear of alienation, that dawning so often ignored how the beloved other is really, in essence, a stranger.

companionable silence feels to me as this comfort without such fears, even as this comfort knows, harboring no illusions, that the other will always remain other.

it is almost like faith.


 tonight is one of those nights of companionable silence.  it is after dinner.  i have already walked with the dogs.  you are at the table, working on the laptop; i am on the reading couch, finishing the book, "The Portland Vase," stopping briefly at times to read you the most interesting parts.  not too long ago, it was "The Root of Wild Madder", something about the natural red dye and the handmade Persian carpets.  i do not tell you how i miss being so voracious a reader as when i was younger; you already know this.  i do not tell you how at times i think there is so much to read but so little time.  we both know how it is to be adults.

already it is late night, past midnight.  i have a chapter and an epilogue left.  there are a couple of papers to review for tomorrow; maybe i'll stay up awhile longer.  

beside the bed, a few more books that i do not read cover to cover.  only when i feel like it--a page or two or so--before turning off the lamplight, or after waking up and not wanting to get up just yet.  roland barthes' "A Lover's Discourse", in spite of its seemingly romantic and/or casual title, is not, after all, a light reading.  it being the rumination of nuance.  nuance being the Intractable.  i particularly like the book because, as koestenbaum so aptly describes it in the introduction, it "is an attempt to get rid of 'love'--its roles, its attitudes--in order to find the luster that
remains when the stereotypes  have been sent packing."

Of course, expectedly a kind of reading that would need one to mull over thoughts after reading a fragment-chapter.  much like milan kundera's
"The Curtain", which, for some time, i tried to read at the airport and aboard the plane.

there is, too, wislawa's book, from where some poems i read for you on mornings. 

secret rain

i realize just now it might have been the first May rain.  some minutes ago.  it woke me up, it being so unexpected.  it was so warm and humid last night, starry too.  no trace of red clouds, or wind when i walked the dog.  when the rain came, the first thought was finally a break of coolness, some draft through the windows left open.  then of the clothes left hanging on the clothesline in the yard.  i got up from bed and walked to the other end of the room, parted the curtains. partly thought of maybe dashing to save what can be saved of the what-ever still partly-dry clothes.  then decided against it.  W* who now sleeps under the newly made bed just looked at me and didn't even bother to move.

went downstairs to have a glass of water and of course couldn't get back to sleep.  wrote some while the rain pelted.  checked emails and a call for submission.  thought of the graduate papers that still need evaluating.  opened the file but didn't read it; noting it instead as a box of to-do tomorrow. listened to the rain slowly easing itself.  calming down.  into no more than drops.  

now listening closely, there are actually sounds of crickets. a motor at a distance.  and my eyes, having adjusted to the lack-light, find it is not really so dark after all this time of the night.  lamp post light seeps partly through the curtains.  and the white light from the laptop i've put on the bed.  it occurs to me now: maybe it was not really the first rain this long summer.  maybe it has rained secretly, nights, leaving only the telltale moist on the grass i mistake as mist by early morning.


















  

early morning run

when you run, are you running to? or running from?
or running, changed, to come back again?





 

dear love

dear love,  these two days i find myself in the mountains in this city of strawberries and pine.  i remember you when i take a walk in the cool mornings, how a day stretches and folds itself not unlike the mountainsides.  this city eight hours away from the rain trees and cottonwoods, the city familiar to me.  the circle of writers i sit with, playwrights, screenwriters, poets, fictionists, we all agree:  how silences and restraint account for half the world.  this art of hiding.

elephant memory

the old man on the bench was the sexiest old man in the world.  observable still, the clear traces of his hard chiseled-like brawn.  i told him so and he laughed.  must have had heard it many times before.  in spite of tropical heat, where we were was cool, and eternally springing, and green.  and this, i also told him so.  he agreed and we both got into talking.  about the weather.  hinterland farmer, the sexiest old man in the world, and the writer.   i told him:  i was up in the boondocks some days ago.  you still pan gold here?  yes.  and so, more talking.  this time, about his cows.  and the multipurpose Co-op.  and their fresh milk deal.  of course.  we both knew this: us both trying to skirt away.  if possible.  such a beautiful breezy May.

i took out no pen, no paper, no recorder.  and asked him instead about the dust road beside the cliff, from where we just passed.  how long has it been there?

oh a long time, he said.  that's where the wartime soldiers took my wife to be never seen again.