There is Method to this Morning Madness

There is method to this morning madness.

We wake to the rage of the lame limbs

of trees played up by the fierce winds,

the leaves dancing with whatever lonely light

there is in the rampaging rains

on sad streets in the crowded cities

on thinning trails in the sorrowing mountains

on the timorous tides of surging seas.



The riverside and coastal counties are filled

with light rain and light snow.

They remind us of the stories

we cannot make out in the savagery

of the stormy evening.



We see the possibilities of the day

from our closed window,

all of us exiles in this cold country

of dream and promise.



The window is shrouded in raindrops

and ice flakes and warm words

even as the mind comes misting

too with the knowledge

of what comes next in the morrow

in the undecidedness

on the blank page or

on that blank screen inviting us to shake off

that madness that comes in mornings like this.



We cannot see the snow peaked mountains

from where we sit to write

the poignancy of our search for pains

that will color our phrases

that will hint to us the poetry of peril

in abandoned anguish of saving words.

from these silences that come

with the creative rage of our regrets.

Or the way we say things.

Or the way things say something to us.

As in this wind, fierce and in fighting mood

we wished this were the force in our sentences.

The ranges in the east are dark as well,

that place where the sun

never learned to go to bed

but always came on time

in the past days.

There is no outline of the posh villages

carved out of the hills jutting out

all of a sudden from the sea we know

for certain its other shore is that of our birthland,

the one we left behind to write our poetry of exile.

The mind refuses to yield to the wild terrain

of a terse verse we have

long thought of, remembered, recited.

Or declaimed with drama,

emotions intact, raw and fresh.



We rise to greet the morning and the rain reminds

us of a weather that will create a swath in the forest

of stanzas we have long kept.



We rise to perform

the ritual of the morning: say our prayer with a bowl

of fresh water, light two tea candles, and take on

this heavy task of creating a new exilic poem.

Or poems of exile.

Or poems in exile.



Aurelio S. Agcaoili

Torrance, CA

Jan. 7, 2005