How to begin

The origin, the seed

how one begins

is not always known.

Leaves filter the light

sometimes luminous lines appear

murmurs arise, slowly fade

you are playing with a cat

noises outside distract your attention

young adults riding bicycles passing 

outside the window are talking loudly

You search your memory

when you were at that age

developing the habit of repetition

riding around town and along the river

your imagination arranging images

the commotion when fishermen arrived at the dock

the boats, smell of the sea, fish, big and small.

You bike back home

like completing a loop in memory

you will listen to the language of the birds

unsurprisingly calming at the end of the day.

Sunny Day

63 degrees, sunny, the tide is going upstream

Maybe 

the scope of your vision is narrow,

the field is wide, memory may falter,

movement, persistence, diminishes

distance between remembering,

words will come in baskets

no barren day or empty life

even dreams have voices

do not cease 

to take care of yourself

Rise, go, where nature lives.

The Masked Woman

The  Masked Woman

 

I remember the first time

I saw you sitting inside a tire

Swinging under a tree

Like a happy child

Your eyes were fixed on me

Like a bee chasing my thoughts.

I was memorizing the afternoon

Poetry of a pandemic.

LOVE

Love

Walking around the kitchen, dining room

She notices words on boxes, objects on the walls

On papers lying around the tables

She hears the sounds, sees images, juxtapositions

She remembers her mother

making wreaths out of corks

She arranges her own

Made of mushrooms and marshmallows, crackers and fruits

She remembers when her mother took her to an art museum

They saw Monet’s paintings of haystacks and water lilies

She remembers her mother

took her and toured a pineapple plantation

She imagines Monet painting

rows and rows of pineapples

How about rows and rows of olive trees

Will he get tired of them?

She wishes she can ask her mother

She will know.

 

Looking back

I remember

a halo of black curly hair

and your distracted face.

 

 

Vanishing point

Pearls of laughter, precious and soft
The laundry hanging, rhododendrons of peach and purple
Photos of them together next to a giraffe
Arranged themselves in her mind
While she walks on the beach
with no vanishing point
Where children are playing,
Two are chasing the gulls
and laughing
They will not be at the tea ceremony
dainty mountain of gestures and formalities they want no part
One day the memory will rise
And remember one own’s happiness
Like a child waking up
Her eyes looking at her mother
Her mother smiling at her

She turns around and walks back
The children and the birds are gone
The sands are changing colors
Someone waves from a distance
She continues her walk on the beach
With no vanishing point.

Remembrance

Lift the veil of early hours
Look at the mirror
to see what you want
You see not what you need
You have to remember the instructions
which key, which book to open
The best songs once lodged in loneliness
rising with the first light
You are not a star that fell from the sky
But a stone picked from a dry riverbed
You are experiencing difficulty of change, fragmentation
13 dishes from the blackbirds to feed the masses
the song birds are gone, problems remained
You return to the room
sit next to someone in a lotus position
hearts beat in silence.

note: I finished reading Circe by Madeline Miller. Entertaining,flowing prose.

Drawing

I draw my childhood on my notebook
As far as my imagination can take
I was once a shepherd to five sheep
I watched them graze and sleep
I ate alone and slept on the grass
Then I went back to the city and school.
Field of hay flickers in my memory
A lingering kiss of time.

what was it

They walk the ruins

haunted by all the brokenness

for what was once there

Uncertainty

Remembering certain moments of elation of the afternoon
And not the whole idle expansion of the day
We walk towards the fountain expecting a cooling mist
It’s windy, we laugh as our hair and faces get wet
The changing detachment and tone in the photographs
Overhead a falcon practices its dives,
Hiding a new flying patterns and surprises
The day ends and we go our separate ways
Not knowing if there is a new day.