Via Negativa

At church on Sundays, I tend to forget
the right sequence of words in the Nicene
Creed. My ten year old squeezes my elbow

—she thinks I’m skipping words, going too
fast (just like the way I drive), merely
impatient to be done with it and get to

our destination. I’ve tried to explain
that my ability to remember the standard
version was ruined, ever since Father Jean-

Marie Chang of Lourdes Church on Kisad
Road in Baguio had an epiphany many years ago,
and created a thirty-minute “fast-track” mass.

It started at noon and ended in enough time
so folks could make it to the all-you-can-eat
buffet at the Country Club, or back home

a few streets away before the chicken stew
even had a chance to cool. Tucking, trimming,
and compressing, he also delivered homilies no more

than five minutes long. I’m sure the bishops fumed,
but no one could deny his flock soon outnumbered
those at other churches. His busy, practical

parishioners soon learned to cut through
repetitious language, the God from Gods
and Light from Lights, the true God from

true Gods. He’d even thought to streamline
salvation for us (no longer for us men— all this
predating gender-speak). There are times though,

when I make a more conscious effort to slow down,
to remember those parts of the sonorous old language
that make me think of cool vaults and flying

buttresses; and beneath them the molten yellow
of candle flame. And at the altar, sacristans
swinging censers filled with burning incense,

tendrils of smoke stalled somewhere between
fluttering and soaring, just like the hundred
and more petitions of the faithful on their knees.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

I am thinking of questions to ask the poet
who writes lately of horoscopes and of death,
at least two things that have in common

the letter e, which might stand for the
eternal dilemma at their core: how much we
want to know what’s coming for us in a future

which no one can really see. It’s not quite the same
as the meteorologist forecasting days of rain,
tracking by radar the course of a hurricane

battering its way up the coast and across
the mountains, before dumping twelve to eighteen
inches of rain on the ground. Days and days later,

as the sky clears and the woods slowly begin
to dry, the families who fled low-lying regions
return to their homes after the evacuation

orders are lifted. We know some of them
will return to find everything as they
left it, except perhaps they might have

to throw all the food gone bad in the fridge
when the power went out. But at least some
of them will stop short in a muddy driveway

that once looked familiar, stare at a now empty
house lot strewn with fallen limbs and debris.
The next-door neighbor who decided to stay

through the worst of it, might come and
tell them what happened: how the waters rose
too quickly, how before nightfall, the river

currents pushed the house like a paper
boat under a bridge and out of sight.
And they will hug each other tearfully,

give thanks for their lives even while
bemoaning their losses, perhaps sinking
on their haunches or shaking their heads

in disbelief— While somewhere higher up
or inland, the rain will continue in its
own time, to make its way to the ground.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

How your cares write themselves
on the chalkboard of your brow—
litany of looped hurts and

disappointments you wish
the mottle-winged moth would
brush away as it sweeps, haltingly,

across the surface of the floor.
Is it necessarily one or another
effect of age that you can’t fathom

why your son would rather live in sin
with his pregnant girlfriend, than go
before a justice of the peace and do

the right thing? or that you
want to chuck nearly thirty years
at the same job because you woke up

near dawn with the epiphany that, all
these years, you were really meant to be
a cabinet-maker in a village with one

main street? A mosquito lands on curls
of wood shavings the soft, creamy
color of skin. And we too tremble

at the same instinct: sweet blood, some
joy we’ve long postponed— And the years
click like beads of an abacus in the veins.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Everywhere is a mirror, if you care
to look: red porch floor made glossy

by wind-blown rain, hummingbird
hovering over its surface. Round

soup spoon skimming, dipped
beneath to snare a disc

of ginger, coarse ruffled leaf.
Your eyes: across these bowls

of cooling tea, dark irises
enclosed in softer brown. Late

risen moon: careless coin, forgotten
wish tossed into shallow water.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

It started out simply, a game
of little questions as she ironed
a stack of laundry in the afternoons

while I colored pictures at the table
and rain drew circles on the windows—
What would happen if you went to school

and discovered you’d left your lunch
and had no money in your pocket? or,
What would you do if you came home

and the doors were locked, and no
one was here? I don’t remember when
the hypothetical problems became

more difficult to ponder, or if my mother,
pausing in the rhythm of her labors,
considered the metaphysics of these

further tests. Next, she asked questions
that seemed to be about other persons,
say, the neighbors next door: What

do you think would happen if one day,
you woke up to find your parents
had died? I’m sure it was only

to prepare me for the difficult
uncertainties of life, to begin
to teach my mind to cultivate

the detachment which comes
of acknowledging what it can’t
ever control. I can’t remember

if my dreams were suddenly
clouded with locusts and plagues,
if blood bubbled upon the waters;

or if I ever saw in them the angel
of death waving a sprig of rosemary,
walking on the grass and passing

beneath the trees which trembled
slightly, even those whose leaves
were toughened by a long summer.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.