Do not strain your ears

Something is happening next door. 
Since the young woman with large hair
moved in, there has been cat sounds,
one time even a baby's. The young man
who grows edible mushrooms, dropped by
one afternoon to give home baked
brownies, still warm with
Brownies for everyone. Love Joe 
in red marker. I never got around

thanking him, missed the chance to
when we briefly met. 
I was opening my front door, he was
on his way to "the forest".
The weather forecast said rain.
Who am I to know?
The first sound of fireworks I mistook
for faraway gunshot. Not even 
their festive lights bring me back
to childlike wonders. 

The flowers are still abloom, yes,
but the gusts have come, leaves turning
slowly. I tell myself to return again
to the habit of running or walking
accompanying the self.
The young man next door has taken into
playing New Age music, early evenings
the young woman calls out a name
and a stray cat named Oliver appears.

body of reason

She does not know Hegel. That beautiful woman
at the screen I speak to, the screen a window
if only possible to get through. What else

does she not know. She does not preoccupy
herself with is-ness of things, abstractions
and smiles at me, my follies. Talks instead

of government politics and the series on TV.
Her work on people, the current music,
the produce market that is newly opened,

transplanting the herbs in the garden, the rain
this monsoon, and sending the dogs for groom.
These things now without me.

Where I am now, the leaves turn. Tonight
it rained on the way home. The phrase remains
no matter what it means.

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.

2300

Twenty three hundred and there is a random line in mind.
An image lingered from the last story read, an Atwood;
the story, party autobiographical.
At the corner of my eye, a house lizard looks about.
You can almost see through its new skin.
There are no stars tonight; the sky is threatening rain.
I want to tell you about stray dogs daily seen
but it not going to be a happy story.
What can be told happily about? Happily being a word
that skips and hops like a child
singing a newly learned song or meeting a new friend
who has agreed to exchange marbles with a bubble gum
the kind that leaves a tint on your teeth.
When did you learn to whistle?
I learned to move my ears when I was nine or ten or
eleven or twelve; who can remember exactly when?
Summers melt themselves together; you and I once
ran light footed on the wind itself.
The ears can still move to this day;
a trick to fascinate any child with.
One of these days I think I will find myself
telling why I have stayed away from church
even though god must still be out there.
No one asked "Can a poem really change a world?" Answer is
no
but they are written anyway because the lines are there.
Lines like boundaries of what lies on either sides.
The day is unfinished, but has ended.
  

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.

calm before storm

The people on this island who still remember
their indigenous science can tell
an impending storm is coming

feeling the absence of wind, despite all
sunshine, clarity, and birds.
The large ring around the moon tells them

remember remember remember to tell.
But the animals who need no remembering

sniff for wind, are listless and far 
from the pretence of sleep.  Blind, I can only

watch the forewarning swirling on the web.
A hurtle is restless, is angry, is coming. 

Remembering the count of one to ten,
I prune the sweet wilderness of trees.

A Whisper of Storm (a pastiche)

Three days of rain             Early sunrises             Early darks

On this listless December         On this island of rain
There is a whisper of a storm not half an ocean away

Nights the beggars pretend not to beg by carolling
The city gates have opened         The strays have come to stay


                                          *  *  *


I drove all the way to your neighbourhood and found
You were not yet home         Your new wife        The one I haven't met

She answered the door and knew my name
She looked different from the last two I've known

What leads you 
one woman to another?  

"I just dropped by.  Friday and thought maybe a couple of beers."
I drove around town


                                          *  *  *


Finally at 65         G will be leaving for Spain            to retire
We threw a celebration for her leaving or for her life        both

T made quiche
And after everything        we all had tea

Of course nobody really talks about leaving


                                         *  *  *

And

Adam wrote to Eve
"I am breathless and anxious and sick with dread and desire."



















 

in keeping with silence

In keeping with silence, the idea of
another city is no longer the same.
There is an absence that was once
not there, a kind of empty in the air.
No else knows of this, even though
surely there are those who feel
a certain trace on their skin. A damp
weight of memory that memory has
already forgotten the name.  Some-

times, when enough of us has gather
into a circle of remembering, we can
string together the beads of stories
recollected from dampness in the air.
Re-creating the city from another time.
From the days when we were young
once immortal in love.

that, too, does not have a name

The sky is the frosted kind of grey.  I do not get up from bed.  She planted a kiss before she left and now is gone.  Something urgent on email.  A large plane can be heard leaving for somewhere.  The calendar is full on the days to come.  But I want to slow down, to pause, to stop momentarily.  To wake again when it is bright and some part of my soul is ready.  There is a worm somewhere inside.  It manifests itself in the plants.  A part of a row in the garden died seemingly overnight.  She noticed this at the doorstep.  I hadn't even known.  The last I saw the entire row was green.  How did they wither and die?  The sturdy tropical green cuttings of which I do not even know the name?  The grass by them are dry and dead too.  What about the soil?  I am too tired to check.  I go back to bed and nurse something that, too, does not have a name.  A kind of wariness.  Is it fatigue?  A kind of passive-aggressive stress finally manifesting itself?

In Blackwater Woods

In Blackwater Woods



Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.





- Mary Oliver

when half of the rest is asleep

always, when half of the rest is still asleep and the world as is known is quiet, with only shades of light in hues of blue and gray, the nip in the air still brings with it traces of the origins of sleep.  always, it is the best time, i think, to wander and wonder what is it in this world we all have to so joyously suffer.  one's perceptions so limited no matter how the travel and empathy.  not a few times did i wonder if it is better not to know a good number of things, including that one can only know so little.  perhaps it is better to be asleep like the rest and the others who sleep joyfully, fitfully in unknowing...

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.


















 

the mermaid gardens

The mermaid wakes 
to a garden chilled by rain.
She remembers
the last morning by the sea
on a photo.  She was sitting 
crosslegged, red blanket on sand
surrounded by blue 
sails in the background.
The last time her lover
mouthed her name.
This morning, the dragon 
wing begonia flowers 
brim with seeds.
She fingers them
with eyes.


                                            photo by and poem for ricci

between four and six

Afternoons on Mondays and Thursdays between four and six,
I teach a class of "internally displaced."  Especially opened 
for university students who survived the storm, who wanted to
          move          forward         with the Haiyan on their backs.  

Their stories of back home are still on our TVs.  
On prime time news, their gutted city and wiped out towns, 
their people, families, love ones           bodies 
unidentified in body bags       while the rest 

of us watch while eating our dinner.  How art is a therapy. 

 A week ago in an earthquaked city still pitch dark
without electricity, even fireflies, children held on
to Crayolas and brushes to story-tell.  The artists 
supposed to show them how, ended as audience instead

or bearers of stories of stones the children had carried
like body bags on their backs.  Losing their parents,
siblings, friends.  Some or all of the people they knew.
Horrors no longer unfamiliar to us.

What is the human spirit really made of?

In class, the conversation of the day was Another Country,
a story about the many kinds of displacement, 
the many kinds of understanding      home and       
love.  Its varied complications.  Nobody talks

about death       and the drowned bodies on the streets
the looting, the aftermath, the forced migrations,
homesickness like palpable emptiness       
in this another country with its strange language.

How art is therapy.  How it tears raw

wounds just trying to heal         a day at a time.
A kind of patient confrontation.  "Too soon," I had said
to the student guidance counselor whose eyes
have long been softened on the edges by blunt blows.

She said yes and no.

remains of the beginning of day

3 slices of toast
3 slices of ripe papaya
2 kinds of cheese
half a bottle of lemon concentrate
coffee, dregs
some thin slices of carrots
half a glass of water
two dogs, pretending to go back to sleep
the quiet of the morning
faint imaginary sounds of birds
sound of a leaving plane
occasional sound of rain drop on some roof
a faraway dog bark
















 
 

A Wednesday Morning

From the window I could see the hairlines of soft rain.  Slanted by breeze.  This morning, when it was still dark and the dogs were let out, the chill was December.  That end of the year with a kind of brightness people mostly call cheer.  

It is sunup now and I still attempt to write that which I lost last night.  I do not look at the clock but it does not leave my mind.  Only the dogs are patient.  They have long, short days for dreaming.  Perhaps, of running around with their humans.  Their tails wagging with glee.















 

birth-day

Here it is a travesty.
That life goes on for a number.
That celebrations are called 
for some other reasons
if one does not care to remember.
In another place, entire towns
and cities are awashed.
Only the memory have names.
Too many bodies are found,
cold and strange. The loved ones
remain missing.  Underneath
all the mud and debris where 
those who survive must stand 
go on living.





(Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, Philippines)




by shane





















 

rocks, water, light

photo by A.L. Abanes (may you and your family be safe)

at what point the anger? 

the resignation, the calm? 

how aptly it was said: 

when you know the storm is coming, 

the quiet has a shimmer. 

and shimmer it did; and Haiyan 

took many lives: children, 

men, women.  

no mention of countless pets,

no word about lovers

only strangers with unknown names

in a city nearly wiped unrecognizable.

was it only half a year ago i came 

backpacked to visit and stand

to admire the sunset at their pier?

no news, only reports of dead 
bodies in evacuation centers,

trying to explain the unknowing-ness

of storm surges. of divine plans.

but the footage of a man

the body of his six-year-old 

daughter in his arms, cold.

a shimmering light with it all.

  

flooding in another city

almost a week now national news tell nothing new:  flood and flooding somewhere:  the southwest monsoon; torrential rains; collapsed dykes and dams; overflowed rivers; and waves after waves of mudwaters having made their ways to the cities, mudwaters with the strength of twenty or more feet deep burying roads and cars and trucks and houses.  boats hovered by houses' roofs.  no Ark.  and crowding at the centers, the countless evacuees.

the local news tell a different story:  the collision of an oil tanker and a passenger boat.  more than two hundred missing.  a pregnant woman found floating at sea.  and that it has been more than seventy-two hours and so operations have changed from search-and-rescue to search-and-retrieval.  

government, as expected, is diligent on working on blame and accountability: they are out looking for a woman believed to have siphoned money.

the champion church is doing nothing.  while all the weather forecasters tell everyone to continue expecting rain.

but in this place, how the full moon shines quiet and bright.  i try.  the airline tickets lying in wait.














 

where to be

There has been talk these days of retirement and retiring.  As if one has, inevitably, arrived at the one place, or time, meant for waiting in whatever way we may so choose to wait.

Ralph, he says, "in my dotage", and dotage is the word he did use, "I will stay here in B*."  We are in a cab, familiars and visitors of B*.  I look through the cab's rain pelted windows, to what I imagine as mountain folds hidden in the fog.  The world outside is wet.

We pass by a park and I'm randomly reminded of firewood, fire trees, and fireplaces; and the persistent mist that covers the windows, the drafts that let themselves in in rooms.  Early mornings at the hotel, I stay in the sunroom.  

I tell Ralph what would he do in such cold a place.  Will he be writing?  Be with a new, younger lover?

I say I write better too in a cold place, preferably with rain.

But I do not say I'd like to stay close to sea.  No matter how much I love keeping hands on a garden; maybe, no matter even that I'd want to tend bonsais the way my mother used to do when I was so very small I can hardly remember.  Teach a potted old tree to bear flowers, or to bend an arm like this to catch the sun this way.

We arrive at the fellowship dinner place early.  Jay, still quite unstable after the afternoon vodka, and I decide to take a walk.  B* is a beautiful place.  I wish I had a cigarette.  We talk about politics.  And B*.  And retiring.

Maybe not here, Jay says, I'd like to see fields after fields of sugarcane when I wake up in the morning.

I laugh and say "You sure take after ---*." 

He shrugs, still looking pink because of vodka.

My own literary parents are retired.  When I visited M* she showed me her garden of herbs and gave me turmeric and local varieties of basil.  J* too wants to farm:  Like my father before me, he said.

What I'd want to do in my last waiting days is to always see the moon, rise gold, rise silver, rise quiet.  And maybe instead of running with dogs, I will be paddling a boat out to sea.