What passes through me?
I can't say.
But I feel it move,
causing bone reverberation
of a subtle kind.
I feel it deep within,
but it fades quickly.
I'm moved, but to what,
I can't say.
All I know is that something
has passed through me,
and made me feel like a ghost.
A.K.A. The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary Parish Church, this church in southern Bohol dates to the late sixteenth century.
A white-knuckled grip on the rail, though the ship is sinking. The brain insists one hold tightly; there's no mind for thinking. A samaritan pries at your fist, but it will not budge. In giving up, he feels guilty -- conscience jury and judge. You couldn't wedge just a single breath to crack a space for thought. A simple thing it is to let go, but look what fear has wrought. A quarter million tons now drags you to the cold, dark depths. Until the body's unthinking gasp of watery breath. The hand lets go, but still you sink trapped by your last mistake. The tragedy of a grasp reflex that you could not break.
Each of us lives a life improbable, the gift of an ancestor who struggled through some terror which killed others. We each have an iron impulse to maintain a cracking grip on life, but some won't ever be pried away, growing like the stunted pine that juts from the mountainside: gnarled but indestructible. Live improbably with your life improbable.
in early summer,
i left home. i’ve been back,
but never returned.
from temple hill, flat land to the horizon verdant with life.
the wasp is still; the wasp jinks erratically. pilgrims break sanctity.
