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 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.














  

right across

shall we take a quiet walk together?

entering oceans

He said he would like to farm one day, spend 
the remaining of his life bearing with the land.
This man I admire so much for kindness
my own dark heart slows its pace.

It has been nearly a decade now since last
we spoke. I continue to echo his words,
writing is word made flesh.
Perhaps, after all, I've heeded the calling

no matter in another form. Quiet mornings
by the window such as this, I think it is
the lonely sailing that I feel. At seventy

I would like to stay very close to the sea,
see all the time the horizon all will cross
on the given day.














photo by J.Quintos

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.

on mystic writing

I.

another detail i recall:  her side of the bed is
side-by-side with a patch of leaves of grass.

this is another house.  not the same one
that had appeared in too many dreams, 

like a puzzle.


II. 

roger, the mystic says, do i not keep
a journal of dreams.  no, i say, no.

we are surrounded by dark green walls
in the middle of a steak house. it is noon.

how did the conversation move to dreams?
i tell him of the house that appears

recurring in my dreams, now for years.


III.

this house, stands at the edge of a land, looks
at a body of water. on its feet a lake, bay, or beach.

right of the house, a cliff.  where on one dream, 
i was standing on when i saw the house.

left, pebbly driveway where i manoeuvred 
my motorbike on another dream.

the driveway, next to a boundary wall.  
the driveway aligned to a small bamboo cottage

by the lip of the water.  in one dream, 
i was in a group beach picnic when i looked up

and saw the house is whitewashed wood.
with a large glass window on its forehead.

european design, but the location 
philippine. "two-storey?" roger asks.  

"yes," i say,
"and with a balcony up front."

he laughs.


IV.

it exists, he says.  
after the description in detail.
european house, by a lake in bukidnon.
cliffs, yes, driveway too.
and the short rocky, pebbly slope
to the lip of the water.
right, even the cottage.
an artists' retreat.
housed at one time, a poet.
in another, a painter.
heavy furniture imported 
all the way from germany.
constructed in 2011.
been there.
with g* and p*, he says. 
we took photos.  beautiful place.
even though
the house is hostile.


V.

i began dreaming of the house, 
2009.
in all the dreams, the sky
always in shades of gray.
the last time
i dreaded
seeing it.


VII.

didn't you mention about going on a writing retreat this summer?

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.

it was fourteen years ago

no wonder.  but a wonder still.  the little boy, now a young man.  i hadn't notice: only seeing him once in a while.  until right beside him, a young woman.  

how so suddenly old i feel.  body weighing heavier despite the mind.  it knows what the mind forgets:  little sister is not little anymore; and hasn't been for a long, long time.


















 

selves as containers

there was a time when things were so very bad and it was a long time ago in a different life not this but of another no matter it may appear our existence is in a chronological order and that life was first and this second and this version only possible because of how that first was turned into something else and brought out into the open air for sun for breath and those that remain insoluble are kept stored in airtight glass containers and kept in cupboards or closets or hidden under old unused linens to be forgotten.

nobody talks about the time and the glass containers no matter their details have fused themselves as stalagmites and stalactites into the limestone caves of our minds where we keep a guard the small but wary version of ourselves who makes certain the door is locked to keep underground water from following its way following the indelible map that breathes in the dark having been accustomed in the dark that leads into the gap into the time when things were so very bad they remain dregs in our sleep

they call and make us walk in their wakefullness in our sleep the perpetually abandoned us haunting our own adult selves who have become amnesiac and selective and brave and afraid

yes there are so many things so many stories of times when things were so very bad it takes All of Silence to keep our dam selves whole.


                                                  
                                                                                                    of Mamala and women who live among people












                                                                  

the best time to travel

the best time to travel is late in the night.  i find that this is the time when people in the city, and the person you're with, becomes both stranger and intimate.  late in the night, the city becomes a place for anonymity and intimacy.  both.  at the same time.  and all the nuances in between.  we can sit on the pavement, on a street bench, if there's any.  i will lean on the lamp post, we can share the only cigarette left, passing it to each other.  and until it's gone, we can preoccupy ourselves with many other things.  trivial, or otherwise.  like the night.  and the cars passing by.  what kind of lives do those people have.  how do they get by.  had we been younger, we would have been impatient.  might already be drunk, even.  beer, or something like it.  and we'd be recounting triumphs and heartaches, and dreams, grand, achievable, or otherwise.  we most likely would end up laughing at ourselves.  finding comfort in one way or another following one or another's crazy idea we'd be lucky to promptly forget the next day because of hangover.  or being not young anymore, we'd decide in the night.  the nearest cafe, or home.  or if you're up to it, we can find a way to travel the next few hours to the nearest shore.  the best time, too, to leave the city.  the crisp wee hours to see sunrise from there.

if there is no other shore

On Prayer







You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the world is
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice:  I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
They will walk that aerial bridge all the same.








Czeslaw Milosz

Translated by Robert Hass 

the persistence of the every day

a student in the university committed suicide yesterday.  because she couldn't pay the fees.



and so she becomes news now.  the activists rallying behind her dead body and its story that no one really heard until it, too, stopped breathing.  behavioral psychology major, couldn't make the fees, past extensions, plus the depression, the family poor, the government to blame, not enough education subsidy, the officials say the uni is not to blame, nor the policies, the students want someone, anyone, they walk out from their classrooms today

but they will be back tomorrow.  and after she's buried, news will be new.  as expected.  the dailies roll.  and every one carries on. 

the shore

i dreamt again, last night, of coming back to the bay.
the same bay reconstructed several times; each time different
and the same.
i was flying and saw it again from above.
the waters were tumultuous and gray
and there was a big boulder, uneven, jutting out towards sea.

i tried to come as close as i could to the shore.
there was a small patch of sand, a small valley
between the weather-beaten house and the large dark boulders
on the small patch of sand there will always be people
beach happy and unaware 

a few meters before them, a few meters past the line
where their children play on the shore
a cliff begins, where the bay gnaws wide
and there will always be, recurring in every dream,
the unexpected rising tide
the whipping of larger and larger waves.

the children would scramble to the shore.  
parents would collect them in towels and
young friends would laugh.  everyone would 
hide their fears, everyone would hurry
to leave the shore and the bay and head home.

i knew these.  having dreamt the same shore again and again.
changing the scapes of its face: one time it was a pier
so very long and stretching towards another bridge
that crumbled too soon and fell apart 
people fell into the cold 
turbulent seas.  i knew these.  having dreamt the same shore

again and again.  the deeply gray, downcast skies.
last night, i dreamt i could fly. 
and came to the shore as fast as i could
urged the people to leave.  the gray was fast getting dark.
i recognized the people: they were my family.

and they were about to leave when i came
climbing on shared motorcycles to leave 
the remote shore that had suddenly gone narrow.
i was to leave with them, to drive my sister's motorbike
taking the handles and revving the engine.  
my sister climbed behind me on the scooter.  we were leaving

the road had suddenly gone potholed and steep
ninety degrees up of slowly loosening dried mud
again, i revved the engine.  and again.  trying
to keep steady.  the tires trying hard not to swerve.
i became afraid of the inevitable fall from the vertical incline.
all the other motorcycles had sheerly, barely made it.

loose dirt and gravel danced beneath the tires.
the scooter didn't have enough power.  i turned to look
at my sister but she was gone.
her motorbike couldn't make it.  i carried it on my shoulder
instead, the land and the shore was falling apart
there was a balcony of the weather-beaten house again 

i clung on it with my other arm.  and across, into the house
i could see, between
the scooter i was holding on on one shoulder and 
hanging on for dear life on the other, i could see
someone recognizable from the house noticed me.