crossing boundaries

Have you seen the movie "Interstellar"?
A meeting of metaphysics and science.
Also, an explanation on love being

What can transcend time and space.
Is beyond it.
Is through it. A fifth dimension.

Such a very large word, love.
Our idea of it an ambitious claim.
Also, foolish. And brave.

Let me make the claim anyway.
Entire sense and experience into 
This one convoluted word.

Not only an idea, but also this 
state of waking, sleeping, dreaming.

Rodovia

Portia passed away yesterday. Word reached me late, 
translating itself from Portuguese to English, 
from the last photo I saw of her (Atlanta, smiling 
beside another colleague on sabbatical leave)
to the photo found after having made my way across

morning coffee, rain (another storm is coming
to these islands), and jazz.
On the news, only a broken motorcycle on highway
only a trace, previous presence. No Portia.

Had I been at the office yesterday I would have had
company to share loss with: this kind 
of irreplaceable space occupied by her joy.
Her youthfulness at 67.

She would have had a temper for mentioning the number--
the only way to cause her age. But such a life! 
Of indefatigable joy.

from a hut overlooking part of the ocean

After all, we share a common journey.
When traveling together, it's normal to talk,
exchanging remarks, say, about the weather,
or about the stations flashing past.

We wouldn't run out of topics for so much connects us.
The same star keeps us in reach.
We cast shadows according to the same laws.
Both of us at least try to know something, each in our own way,
and in even in what we don't know there lies a resemblance.

Just ask and I will explain as best I can
what it is to see through eyes,
why my heart beats,
and how come my body is unrooted.

From Wislawa Symborzka, "The silence of plants" pp 76-77

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.

because we'll never know the rest of the way

i wonder how it will be meeting you again
the world is not that large
it is small enough

chances are

we might come across each other again
i know i wouldn't know
what to make of it

chances are

you will appear indifferent exactly the way
versions of you did in
survival stories

something over

the many other lovers left in your wake
because i wasn't blind all along
because neither of us were blind

we knew all along, it was over
chances are

we knew all along, it would be over
chances are

we knew we wouldn't be over.

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.