Thursday, March 20

--



In Peace

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.