To Leave a Trail

It is not this act
of losing ground
that counts,
the strange land
says to us,
we migrants
in loves as
in life.

There is much more
in the finding
of the way
harder and harder
one could imagine
as if we
are all writing
the difficult line
of our praying poem.

To leave a trail,
the rugged land says,
you have to go
the way of the wind,
brave and bold
in its posturing
against all elements
that block its way,
kind in its supple caresses
of the greening leaves.
There the trail it leaves
behind is in the memory
of the courage
it takes
to create storms
to wreak havoc
to renew the earth.

I think of the trail
I take, I, migrant
and wanderer
in the land of loves,
lost and found
lost or found
first and last
first or last,
these loves we have
that keep us alive
we who have died
a long long time,
we who have been betrayed
by virtue of our birth,
date and place,
and the nation of our fathers
that keeps us zombies
and cadavers
and robots.

The loves are
eternal residents
in the song of my soul
I write, sadly,
but I sing the exile's
chant in each line,
the exile always
coming back
at the beginning
of all miserable loves.

The homeland where
the body has its twin
in the earth left behind,
for instance.

Or the umbilical cord
on cheap pots
on treetops
for the sun to dry
and the wild weather
to bring to the heavens
during the summer storms.

The heartland where
the merciful murderers
of metaphors abound,
them who test us
to the limits,
our leaders
who lie to us
as if lying
is what makes
us poets of sadnesses
us cantors of sorrows
that do not have names
like the way we
intone the strange greasy gods
on our bended knees
open up our palms
to catch the blessings
from pallid priests and patriots
who prey on our desires.

So we leave a trail
the land says, dust
covering us
once more
to remind us
of the origins of our hopes
of the genealogy of the redemption
that, we can only dream, will be ours.


A S Agcaoili
Inquirer Editorial Offices
Carson, CA
Jul 31/05 9:46 AM ABC7 Time