Poetry – Dina Klarisse

Adrift

Told the sea I’d sail today

Toward a dream along its horizon

Dragged myself along the sand

Holding on to what I could

On the water I drift toward that line

Taking inventory of what I have

Some crumbs of home,

A bottle of memories

And a photo of what it was.

I cannot look, but I feel these items

Remembering them with touch.

When the storms reach and begin to rock

My fickle boat, I reach over the side

Down into the water, sprinkle it over

My head, my body, until I am soaked

Through my clothes. And it reaches my bones

Deep into the atoms that make me,

The cold creeping into what I am.

The line in the distance wavers

In a setting sun, blurring into the dark

And with trembling fingers I reach out

And aim down my arm like a sniper

Towards that dream of mine. Salt on my tongue

The taste unwavering, the taste in each pore

Each crevice and wound of who I am.

I told the sea I’d try again

She sighs and swallows me whole

And I sleep, it is no longer so cold.

Utang na loob

Here’s to mom and dad, who planted seeds
and nurtured them and watched them grow
into tall, proud plants that reached the clouds,
having used their own water and sunshine.

I sprouted and spread, yearning for more
than the soil that embraced my roots and nourished me,
too young or blind or stupid to understand
that I could never truly leave this plot of earth.

It devastated me until I grew too tangled,
too tall to sustain myself, and I fell down
back towards the earth upon which
they stood and still stand, watching and still watering.

And there are so many of us, growing and fighting
for the limited space in the sunshine,
stretching our backs and cutting others’ leaves
to be the tallest, the proudest, the most.

And often we forget that it is not only sunshine
but water and soil and roots that we need
to truly live and thrive, and we forget
that staying grounded does not mean failure.

There is a balance I still seek
between true freedom and utang na loob,
this feeling of indebtedness and responsibility
to give back to the earth and the roots

To be able to stand and grow while proving
to them and perhaps myself that I am worthy
of their sacrifices and sunshine and water;
I am growing but always falling.

Who am I to feel like I’m breaking or broken?
When my grandfather crossed the ocean he was alone
and picked grapes in Fresno and called home
only to be told to stay here and build
a life for the future. For me to sit here unhappy
is to reach back in time and stamp on the fruits
that he had pulled and plucked
truly breaking under loneliness and hot sun.

Who am I to break when I am so lucky?
Lucky to take my time and study and play
while mom and dad worked double shifts
and swallowed tired breaths to make sure
we kids had everything and more.
And while my closet was filled with clothes and toys
I cried breathless from pressure of just being,
so fragile and easily broken and not seeing
in the mirror a person deserving of any of it.

Who am I to break when I stand on a foundation
that had been built with withered, cracked hands
built out of sleepless, lonely nights and lost time?
My only job was to be grateful and enjoy
the fruits of the labor of others who had come
before me, who had built this house. And who was I
to cry and beat the walls because I couldn’t breathe
When they worked their lives away to give me lungs
so that I could inhale opportunity and what do I exhale
but uncertainty and fear and unknowing of who I am?

And I left the house in search of fresher air
building a separate life still on that same foundation
not ever knowing what it’s like to go hungry or feel truly alone
So who am I to feel lonely and sometimes not breathe
for fear that the walls are cracking and this house will crumble
and I with it and everyone will stand at the perimeter
asking who and why was that.

The City I Don’t See

It’s funny and strange how a city changes
through someone else’s eyes.
I scroll through my phone one day
and am struck by a familiar scene
a convenience store I pass every day
to the office or home or somewhere
hurrying by and never noticing
the carved angels atop the building,
misplaced among offices and cafes.
I scroll further and see my subway stop
a crowded and sweaty hell
that I erase from my memory as soon as I escape
has become a collage of textures and colors and shapes,
a harmony of the contrasting lives.

I pass by the store the next morning
and see the owner, who promptly at 8
hoses down the sidewalk and whistles Canon in D
and I wonder which city he sees
Is it the same hazy blur
of employees and passerby’s and no ones?
Or does he wash the canvas blank every day
to make room for the next self-portrait?

Our Blurry Sunset is Our Own

Upon reaching home this evening, I noticed the violet peeking out above apartment roofs in its very last moments before fading into the dark. I was worn after driving through a rainy rush hour on 101, and before that a full day of answering emails and phone calls while my mind wandered to Hawaii and Alaska and beyond. After arguing with myself if it was worth it to stay out longer to see that violet, I called you from outside and told you to come with me.

We’ll have been living in Pacifica a whole year this April, but we still get lost to our sunset spot. Panicking over GPS, we circle around neighborhoods and hills, watching the violet begin fading away. We give up on our sunset spot and instead settle for the post office before a sandy cliff, parked with emergency lights on the red zone. There are others who have stopped in the end of their day, when they are weary from work and parenting and school and life, to see the violet fade into the sea. I step out and walk to the sand and see and smell the waves crashing upon one another. The ocean does not roar today, rather hushes me again and again. Not quiet or calm but sure of itself, comfortable in its cycle. The waves are high, reaching and failing every time to reach the moon, hiding behind clouds. It is cold and drizzling and I am in my work clothes, but we stand with others with our cameras pointed, trying to catch the remarkable violet.

I endeavor to capture this scene, playing with scales and buttons but never quite getting it. You get a few pictures of me — blurry and unfocused. But within the pixels and awkward posing there is that violet, now fading into the last explosion of reds and pinks as the sun makes her way down under the sea. The others fade away, drawn to the rest of their lives after getting that perfect shot. We sit in the car with the emergency lights still blinking and watch out the window, catching last glimpses of that violet as it fades into black.

red dust into sky

Vermillion and crimson emerge around me

With an unceremonious grandeur

Some like daggers, jutting into tumultuous sky

Others stay flat, the tabletop mesas

That had invited thousands of lives before mine.

Those who left behind their homes for me

to contemplate, centuries later.

The sun makes her way west,

illuminating the peaks and ridges.

Flares of gold strike through red dust.

A storm lingers on the other side

And I hear thunder and see streaks

of lightning and rain.

Clouds and the sun battle over the canyon bed,

the aftermath of war a spinning array of color.

Below me the canyon lays vast and deep

as it has for millions of years before any of us

and as it will when we are gone.

When we are ashes and dust and forgotten

the red will remain and still reach for the sky.

Category: Poetry