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    Is it the Kingfisher

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    Amor

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Is it the Kingfisher

    Uploaded by

    Amor
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    0 views2 pages

    Is it the Kingfisher

    Uploaded by

    Amor

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Is it the Kingfisher?

    By Marjorie Evasco

    This is how I desire god on this island


    with you today: basic and blue
    as the sea that softens our feet with salt
    and brings the living wave to our mouths

    playing with sounds of a primary language.


    “God is blue,” sang the poet Juan Ramon Jimenez,
    drunk with desiring, his hair, eyebrows,
    eyelashes turned blue as the kingfisher’s wings.
    It is this bird that greets us as we come
    round the eastern bend of this island;
    tells us the hairbreadth boundary between us
    is transient in the air, permeable to the blue

    of tropic skies and mountain gentian.


    Where we sit on this rock covered with seaweeds,
    I suddenly feel the blueness embrace us,
    this rock, this island, this changed air,
    the distance between us and the Self
    we have longed to be. A bolt of burning blue
    lights in my brain, gives the answer
    we’ve pursued this whole day:

    sea waves sing it, the kingfisher flies in it,


    this island is rooted in it. Desiring
    God is transparent blue – the color
    which makes our souls visible.
    Oh How To Find Silence In the World
    by Cirilo Bautista

    Being spotted in the color of skin,


    why I take care in San Francisco,
    waiting for the bus to Iowa.
    They say racial prejudice is strong,

    Negros and not whites kawawa,


    and because of this they will revolt.
    I shiver and shiver from fear and hunger
    because I just landed from Tokyo.
    A Negro came into the station—
    naka-African hairdo; he holds a small
    whip: it’s scary to look, so
    I did not look at him. Kumakalansing

    the metal on the strings of his shoes


    and he shouts, “Peace, brothers!” Smiled showing
    white teeth. Looked at me—
    maybe he laughed at what he saw—

    a tiny dayuhan, dark and from


    some lupalog. Upside down
    my insides went in fright and pulled
    a cigarette so the redness of my face

    wouldn’t show. I nahalata


    that the Whites there too were quiet
    so quiet, unable to speak in front
    of that Negro. Only when he left returned

    the normalcy in the station—others


    read again, neighbors gossiped again,
    laughter, the janitor sweeped again.
    After a while that Negro passed again

    two white Americanas on each arm,


    blonde, their beauty with no equal.
    The janitor stopped sweeping.
    I thought, “So this is racial prejudice.”

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