By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

THE poem below was written ten years ago, on 21 July 2015. Time has a way of blurring memories, sometimes deleting, sometimes overlaying events with more recent interpretations, depending on newer experiences, depth of understanding and compassion.

Looking back

now that the feeling is gone
I can look at you
past the moonlight
past the silence of dawn
and the silence of your lips
pressed on my forehead

now that the feeling is gone
I can feel the splash of the waves
against the boat
where we coasted our dreams
as they washed away memories
pink debris drifting and swaying
with the sea grass

and I watched the feeling float away
as I looked back at the vast expanse
of water that used to cradle seeds
of wild weeds seeking fertile ground
to grow

and then
as the waves swept on my feet
all the feelings crept back to my knees
like they were rhythms filling in
blank spaces for an unfinished quartet
to honor the rainbow at night

perhaps old feelings live
in the salt of the sea water
and never really leave
and your round face, your round eyes
your quaky playful fingers were snatched
by the moonbeam to indulge Poseidon,
an offering to his beloved Amphitrite

in the moonlight, your apparition hovers
as the dawn passes in silence
ignoring the turbulence of the sea
flooding my heart, as I look back
about to turn into an island
of salt

Postcript: Like Edith, Lot’s wife, I looked back, but was not turned into a pillar of salt, a punishment for disobedience. Disobedience is not necessarily a bad thing, if you are convinced of the reality and genuineness of your actions, and that the world is better because of it. I think when you possess this conviction, God looks away and becomes merciful. Sometimes we disobey our own better judgement, propelled only by an inner guide, a spark that subdues itself as years pass, but whose essence remains to be the kernel of our deeper truth, the delicate purity within our hard shell.

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