The car traces a path parallel to the sea.
The names
of towns, I say in my head,
the parade
of saints and fruits, heroes
and Ilocano words piquant in the tongue.
Remember where they said the sun danced?
Must be all
the water nearby, suffusing
with a
lucid calm. Then: hallucinations.
But the sea
asserts wholeness, form,
routine. It begins, returns, changed
but also
the same. From the radio, I borrow
nostalgia,
an old song I know by heart
but imperfectly,
like everything else. Sometimes
I hear you,
your tentative annotations
in between
the notes: a curious street name,
a tiny cat
by the roadside, the crumbling ruins
of an old
wooden house. How it remains
between
surrender and persistence.
A quiet
thing and tender. A truth
we had long
accepted like a dancing sun:
wondrous in
its illusion, held up by faith
alone, a
legion of hopeful, upward gazes.
