Via Negativa

When my father was buried, cremation
was not yet the common practice it is today.

So he is buried in the northwestern section
of the Baguio Cemetery. But wait, all of a sudden

I'm not so sure. I think he's buried in a crypt, meaning 
his coffin with he himself in it, or what used to be 

the shell of himself dressed in his best dark suit 
and tie down to his best polished shoes, was slid into

a cement rectangle, then sealed, then given a coat
of white paint and a marble marker. I can't remember

who decided on any of these things, since I was young
and petrified by this colossal, new grief. There was a brief

argument about what direction he should face, as if it would 
change anything if his head pillowed on satin pointed toward 

the mountains and the space between, where the sun 
went down each evening. You might think this is just another 

poem, again, about grieving my father's death. It's been 
nearly five decades but I can still see his hands, laid one atop

the other; and between them, a rosary broken to signify how, 
despite our sadness, the rest of us weren't ready to follow.

Where is she now, the one you say left you
              in the swamp of your late awakening? 
And where is the one you pined for in dream 
             after waking dream? She and I are one 
and the same. You think only one of us halved
            her heart when she left you. You think
leaving means only that you could not see 
            the marks our bodies left in space: finger 
trails in a spill of flour and sugar, but not  
            enough wisps of hair to embroider
your name on a pillowcase edge. She comes
            to me when both of us are nearly 
flattened by the unpredictability of time, and
            one of us tells the other she can rest.

- for Nicole W.


When our friend the Tibetan 
Studies scholar teaches us this word,

རྟེན་འབྲེལ་, she puts her hands together, touching
fingertips. It means what the Buddha said: 

If this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist,
that also ceases to exist. That is, every thing, 

every experience, comes into being from its
dependence on and relationship with other
 
things. Just as fog skims off the oyster-
colored waters of the bay to later pearl 

in the skinfolds of heavy rainclouds,  just as bitter 
rinds of fruit retreat from the hungry mouth—

so too do we live in tensile connection to other 
beings. So I will rejoice to learn of your happiness,

and grieve with you because your sorrow is our 
common sorrow. Though I am often lonely,

I am aware of a brighter filament still 
at the edge of my consciousness: I know

it's there, even when it's not there. And I refuse
to believe that even hatred or emptiness 

root in only one place, with no further promise
of changing into something else. Someone once

told me that if I forget to pay attention, I might miss
small signs and portents altering the color of   

an often terrible world. I might think this moment
is all there is, though the wheel never stops turning. 

At our monthly gathering, a friend 
close to retirement said she had finally 
moved into her own apartment, years after
living with a partner in his house. Someone
wanted to know if she wasn't lonely, if she 
didn't now miss the way he cooked for her,
or how every now and then he'd filled 
the garden with music bands and guests
milling around under garlands of light,
wine glasses in hand. But I think I can 
understand that kind of need—which doesn't 
mean the desire for erasure, not yet. The anxious
wind settles around rooftops, and the call
of birds carries high into the trees. In public
gardens, irises start to unfurl their frilly skirts, 
and hydrangeas rise from the tight whorls
of leaves. Born and raised in a house 
where people came and went and doors
were never closed, an armchair in a corner
or the top of a double bed became a whole
planet; became a vessel for sailing away.