A Filipino Stillness
Not the light in Amorsolo’s canvas but the smile that kindles the frame.
Not in dreams, where I lose you among crocodiles. Your silence, a dead end.
Not during advent. When we descend on the archipelago.
Famished birds buoyed by memories cleansed by storms.
A friend who wears the hijab like an armor told me I should don my homeland
like a veil. That way I can safely carry the mysteries of exile.
But I know nothing. Save the sweep of recognition
that passes between us on this corner of Hollywood & Vine.
Your grin bursting with the colors, odors and hee-haws of a village
we cannot forget. In the middle of winter. In a country we call home.
High Noon in Sitio Tambac*
Right this moment, heavy artillery is battering a country far away from here,
as the blue of the sky meets the surface of the sea in Sitio Tambac.
Drones made in Russia hover equally over the dying and those cocking live ammunition for a kill. My screams puny, shrill.
Pooling at my ankle is a school of rabbit fish so thick they are darkness in motion. Headed for sea grass, they blacken the path they take. I move away.
Life, a bullet in motion.
I run away but you always catch me. Because I am not here to flee but to see clearly. This beauty neither consoles nor deceives. It instructs.
Before long, I will go. Back to a place of lesser safety. Where a different battle is raging. War above us and below. Darkness hovering. Remember this day when you go, a voice tells me. Remember the courage it takes to leave. So that you can return.
*Sitio Tambac is a seaside village in Ligao Municipality, Albay, Bicol, Philippines
