Bound by the Same Umbilical Cord

Stone and Scratcher

after a photo by Frank Cimatu

My human knows how to scratch

ecstasy and submission out of me,

rendering my retractable claws

cold as a wet nose.

My side turns into a Zen garden.

I lie, a stone smoothed by hands

of love, slender fingers

tracing landscapes on my fur.

Words Travel

for Karin Schimke

Like in a suitcase, but always more

than the limits of a book’s pages.

Sometimes by a breath exhaled

after a long silence. Sometimes with feathers

tattered, visited by dust more than fingers.

You know this because you have traced

that solace that isn’t loneliness,

but a search. For what, only makes sense

afterwards, never before.

Palms wide open, fingers sensitive

to the half-light, half-darkness

inherent in those thin, fragile surfaces,

you trust the journey into unknown paths.

A way that’s too clear as a printed map

has never appealed to someone like you.

And so you carry more than certainty

even when you close your eyes.

There is always doubt, a kind of falling,

and at the same time a gift, in bearing

hope and wonder like a pair of wings.

Frail Together

“They spend their days together enjoying meals, sitting in the sun and zipping down the halls of the Kingston Residence of Sylvania in their mobility scooters, but they also give each other space.”

                           “He’s 100, she’s about to turn 103, and they just got married”

                           by David Williams, CNN

Most of us turn brittle too soon,

like transparent leaves given to wilting,

the texture of tree bark on our skins.

Words go astray, the train of thought

never quite reaching the desired destination.

Some are reduced to surrendering

sighs between the static

of a dusty television, or staring

at sunsets through windows

in the company of familiar strangers.

Still, there are the fortunate few

like this pair of geriatric lovers

who met in a home they didn’t build.

She’s 102, he’s 100. They got married

on a whim, like youngsters.

Happy to be living together,

though on different floors,

their mobility scooters zipping

past forgetting their creaking bones

into a future fuzzy as each morning.

Even as the flesh grows

fragile as butterfly wings,

there are other ways

of taking flight

amid the trembling.

On Photographs

The tragic beauty of photographs: they cage

the beast of a moment, freezing, as water does at zero,

what in the real world might be something like a fanged

fish thrashing about with its prey on a muddy shore.

A family portrait can hide as much as it shows:

the dull blade of a painted grassy background,

the crooked smile forced almost straight,

the fingers keeping desperation to themselves.

For a panoramic scene, stillness is movement lensed

from a distance in smaller and smaller increments

until one wishes for a breath of air, or for something

more violent to rouse the trees,

uproot what cannot be forever in the ground,

silent and unseen, but always pulsing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Pascual Agustin
Jim Pascual Agustin

Jim Pascual Agustin writes and translates in Filipino and English. His most recent books are How to Make a Salagubang Helicopter, Bloodred Dragonflies, Crocodiles in Belfast, and Waking Up to the Pattern Left by a Snail Overnight.

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