harvest past midnight

i've been floating, floating it seems these past few days, weeks of craziness having to make my presentations and papers. as if in rebellion (or is it total surrender?), my spirit has been dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. days no longer exist. dreaming and working weaving in and out of my hours, so that i no longer notice when it's dawn, or when it's time for a meal. and my body, frighteningly, seems to have adjusted to it so well that it doesn't even feel sleepy or hungry anymore unless my mind remembers to look at the clock....

at midnight two nights ago, having spent the whole night dreaming awake, i found myself reading poetry with tears running down my cheeks. and i didn't even know why. only after that was i able to work on my presentation. the next night, a poem sprang out of me, so suddenly, i was taken aback. good thing i knew well enough to just listen and write down everything it said. in spite of my better judgment and a final exam i hadn't studied for, i spent most of the next day revising poems i hadn't dared look at in a long while.

last night, after cooking my fish specimens and feeding them to the cats and dogs at home, i went to chowking for dinner at midnight, wondering why i was there when i wasn't even feeling hungry despite being on my feet the whole day. finished the gruesome details of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of A Death Foretold over steamed kangkong and tofu. i shuddered as i went home. reminded me of Malena. fell asleep with the cat curled up on my side.

i am taking up an MS in marine biology, major in cramming. when so many things are due for school, that's when i get to do a lot of reading and writing. only because now i allow it; i'm done always pushing that side of me for later and later and later until it just withers away. or refuses to talk to me anymore.

on the bright side, all this stress is making me more aware of everything that needs to be birthed, and rebirthed. or maybe it's just because it's october going on november. the days are getting a bit better, i think. only three more papers, one experiment, and two presentations to go. and always, i am full to bursting of the joy and sadness of imminent rain....

SIGNS

 

I look for you in the way

the half-eaten apple falls

from my hand,

and how I catch it

not a moment too late—

a wonder, really, seeing

how I tend to let things slip

so easily to gravity’s claim.

But never again.

My body is full of the sadness

of imminent rain, when outside

skies, radiant,

gleam with newness

for this day.

Is this you then, in

the unhurriedness of the world

moving past me,

in the cat stretching

its soft, white paws on the grass?

 

I want to see you

in the quickly falling light,

in the delicate egrets, wings

flapping madly for home,

in a field of violet flowers blazing,

blazing towards me.

 

18 October 2007

2:00 AM

 

 

ON A NIGHT BOAT TO CEBU
(after Ana Escalante-Neri's ON A NIGHT BOAT TO DUMAGUETE)

More than anything,
it is the shut door
I cannot bear to see
at the other end,
the darkness of it
filling the doorway
like a blackhole marking

the galaxy in my soul.

So I fix my eyes
on where we began,
the string of lights on the shore
moving farther away by the hour.
There is no turning back;
perhaps, there is no need
for endings, either:
the ocean is a cradle,
the moon our constant lullaby.

Yet dawn pries away moonlight
with its soft, blue fingers,
reveals the outline of islands

traced by the sky.
The door stays shut,
but everywhere else,
the sound of the sun

swinging open.

 

For Ana, who knows no endings

 

3:00 AM, 28 September 2007

M/V Filipinas Iloilo

 

 

PS i would certainly appreciate your comments, criticism, etc. because i feel i don't know how to write and revise my own poetry anymore, especially when they're stream-of-consciousness ones like these two.