Hometown

- after Larry Levis

Of his boyhood bathed in dust
and vines, a poet wrote: A life like that? 
It seemed to go on forever— Labor in fields 
and orchards, hours in the bland hallways 

of school followed by nights as seasons 
changed from one currency to another.
If I lean hard into the pocket of air 
right by my cheek, I can hear 

the gurgle of frogs beneath the vegetable 
plots, the sharp scouring of wet driveways 
by aunts armed with stiff-bristled brooms. 
I also want to say I was happy then, pulling 

chayote off a trellis covered with tendrils
like old telephone coils, lighting a spiral 
of Elephant katol in its clay dish before 
inhaling its eucalyptus fume. When

did frost scald rows of cabbages,
wilting them leaf to bone? In church,
on Sundays a priest in robes of silk
dipped bayabas branches 

into an urn of water and shook
droplets over our bowed heads.
Sometimes doves flew in from 
the parking lot and hovered

in the vaulted ceiling. Cool
marble of tile underfoot. Votives
that we knew would flicker out
when flame hit the empty pans.