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(T  H  E     M  A  K  I  L  I  N  G     S  U  I  T  E    #1)
Infinitesimal

Opening Ritual

 

 

About a hundred tribes

From all over the islands—

Or the ones they sent on their behalf—

In all their magnificent finery

And glittering trinkets,

Gathered for the all-important subject

Of the language they knew,

That of nature and safety.

Each first dropped a coin in a jar

Then picked up a piece of ginger

To chew. As if from some ancient

Realm of memory and speech,

The lead Datu half-chanted his orisons

And exhortations in perhaps B’laan

Or Tausug (though peppered with

English and Tagalog), counterpointed

By the nasal voice of a bailan

Speaking in tongues. Next,

Those chosen put their knives

To the throats of seven hens

And sliced: There were some gasps

As the fowls screamed and everyone

Came up and raised their cellphones

And cameras and tablets.

 

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26 October 2016

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Afternoon Rain

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Afternoon rain

Sweeps through the tall trees

At the roadside

On Makiling: they drip like wet hair

 

The wind from the lake

Below swirls through the leaves

And branches:

A T’boli princess passing

Jingling her trinkets

 

We catch a whiff of her

Perfume as she touches our

Cheeks: the chill branches

Blossom, scintillate.

 

 

26 October 2016

Infinitesimal

                    “Not even the rain has such small hands”

 

Cummings wouldn’t have said

Infinitesimal

It might have been against his principles

I was just wondering

When I had last seen such fine points

Of light falling

In the early morning in my life

This time among

The corpulent crowns of the thickening

Groves beyond

The curving driveway of our billets

At the National Arts Center

On Mount Makiling

 

Behind me, beyond the bluffs dropping

To the lake, the rain clouds

Hung low and dark over the jigsaws

Of fish pens, pregnant

Watercolor portents the warming morning

Banished before

I looked again, and even the rain

With such small

Hands was gone as the sun climbed

 

How infinitesimal is small when the smallest

Drops of cloud

Fill my drowsy wakefulness, the leaves

Delighting

In my old abiding wonder:

My mind, the whole of my being bows

Bends one knee

The skin touching the ground

Infinitesimally

 

 

26 October 2016

Go to The Makiling Suites #2
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