Via Negativa

Gabriela, saying your name like this will make
people think I'm writing to my youngest daughter. 

And yes she was named after you, but also after 
my father—himself named after the announcing

angel, the angel of prophecy and visions. As for us,
our visions are no less heraldic, touched by fire and 

the recurring dream of freedom known by whatever 
kind of name. Do angels have to sacrifice, Gabriela? 

When one falls in battle, does another take his place 
the way you moved without hesitation to the helm

of your husband's army after his assassination? 
It was 1762;  the British had just captured Manila.

He had hoped to overthrow the Spanish government 
in Ilocos, replacing it with native leadership. Gabriela, 

townspeople called you La Generala—fiery angel with
sword aloft, astride your horse, leading the charge on 

Vigan. It was not to be. Captured, you and your soldiers hung
like bells in the plaza. Even now, your name is resistance.  
 

In a total solar eclipse, the sky will darken
as if it were dawn or dusk as the moon

passes between the Sun and the Earth.
Ekleipsis: an abandonment, a failing, 

a forsaking, The moon's shadow obscures 
the face of the Sun, and birds and other animals 

grow quiet. The temperature drops and age-old 
fears arc overhead—a dragon is swallowing the light, 

so we bang on drums or shoot flaming arrows into 
its clouded eye. Herodotus wrote in the sixth 

century of Lydians and Medeans negotiating a peace 
treaty to end a six-year war. In the middle of a solar 

eclipse, imagine armies dropping their weapons, 
rendered speechless by this greater darkness. 

I was naive about many things
in the world when I asked the young 
retreat participant where she got 
the camera slung like a gleaming 
pendant around her neck and she said 
her parents bought it for her as a present. 
At the cafeteria buffet you could choose  
a protein to go with your bread and milk.
Meat, fish, or tofu and a sauce to go with it: 
green sauce or red sauce, yellow, or gravy.
Perhaps I believed possession was mostly 
a byproduct of your own labor. I knew
the cost of two meal plans vs. three. 
I felt sorry for so much uneaten food.

When you have a dream in which you meet yourself 
coming in the door of your childhood home and you look 

at the you looking at you with a level gaze, of course it is 
unnerving. The you in this visitation places his hand 

on your shoulder before moving past you— or is it through 
you—then proceeding up the stairs toward a skylight in the attic 

you don't recall ever being there. If this is the shadow-self 
coming from that place in you of mystery and wildness

and the unknkown, the message he bears is surprising—
You have to stop. Who is the you watching his shadow walking 

away, caught once again in a swirl of obligations to the world?
Perhaps you'll follow him up the stairs. Perhaps you'll lie back

in bed, into the fog of simple sleep from which you can't
retrieve or remember the dreams that visited in the night.


( a partially found poem; thanks to Drew Lopenzina)

The land no longer provides without fail 
for those who faithfully labor and trust. 

In the dream, the hills are packed tightly together. 
When they open their arms, a thousand birds 

fly blind, like arrows into the sun. A smell of burnt
flesh fills the air, and news of cities exploded 

into sand. Through a spyglass, we can see  
a flotilla of ships pretending the pearl of the world 

has not yet been discovered. Even in the dream, 
I want to keep you safe. I want to tear down the over-

growth, to gather rain in flasks we can hide in our 
clothing. We look for round shapes to cup

in our hands. Even in dream, we know the brilliance
of time is hidden in the heart of secret things.  

When your teeth tingle, you are reminded they are bones. 
Your fruit is your vegetable, your bread is a soup bowl. 

The need for utensils seems overrated when you’ve learned  
to scoop a little mound of rice around a piece of barbecue pork.

Don’t you sometimes feel the need to sharpen your tongue 
on a slab of rock salt or apple cake, because sometimes 

it loses the motivation to bloom? The wind is a pulley 
that can make even your knees creak. Do you remember 

how it sang a dirge that stunned the sun into silence?
When such a thing happens, your hair folds flat as a sea.

There aren’t enough days for sorting into neat piles 
but it feels like they’re always running into each other.

Fate has come that much closer. Is this what you were 
thinking as you adjusted all the clocks in the house?