Smudged puffs fade in the glinting blue

‘Round the peak of breathing cone,

Animate rock embraced by lenticular

Cloud, rising in a slope from a horizon

Lined with ships from the world’s commerce

And between sea and footslope,             

Kapuntukan Hill, the people’s lion in repose

Contemplating the Pacific, and just near

The water, the white grit and detritus

Of buildings at the ends of city.

And now nearer to the foreground

The inverted image of the volcano shimmers,

The peak a duplicate smudge among

The ripples, reverse and deliquescent double 

Of mountain rock grazing firmament…

Then the man: The seashore’s sovereign 

Of patience. He sits on the concrete steps 

In his orange shorts and flip-flops,

The steps descending into the darkened 

Depths. He turns his head to the distance,

Baseball cap visor covering his oblique

And incomprehensible stare 

Diverging from the slight curve of his

Rod of tough bamboo, and from its tip

The line dropping out of sight, and under,

The bingwit barb wriggling with worm

Or shrimp for bait, awaits the bite.

Thus, volcano and its reverse double,

The angler on the breakwater steps

Form an immutable trinity of illusion & immediacy,

Angler wading between hunger and leisure,

Between tranquility and catastrophe,

On the glimmering silver of the Pacific, 

Churning cauldron of typhoons, and inside our

Consciousness, longing for calm, in a glint of sky 

And into the eternal indigo of memory.

 

 

Marne Kilates

3 July 2019

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