--

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.