Walking in circles

Nights are dictators too.

When the last glow of day is gone

And the wash of light has hidden

In the hills of the tortured mind,

We stop to work on what metaphors

Can give us, petty promise or pain

Or the difference of their sum.

We protest what comes next,

This walking in circles by

The university's oval, the fading

Circles of our hopes keeping us

Company each step of the way.

Sometimes we go the other route.

Like walking by the foot trail

Guarded by the sleepy canopy

Of trees that have seen

The miracles of young loves

In the darkening night

When the feet cannot figure out

What victory is made of

From our delayed response

To the rain, lean and hard,

Dripping on eaves

Unknowing as always

By the wayside, gets into our cold

Heart. There is war here

There is struggle there

There is in our hearts this

Truth and meaning that must be won

Like the breeze that we need

When we have commandeered

Our legs to walk some more

Walk the length from the rooms,

Small and delicate and sacred,

We keep in our drunken desires

For eternal change and more of those

Over here as elsewhere

When life is seen as a poem

When a poem is seen as life

And this walking in circles

Is part of the ritual to be alive.

Nights are dictators in Manoa:

We walk in circles to resist

We walk in circles to come to life.

A Solver Agcaoili

Manoa/Nov 20, 2009