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
