I.

I want to tell you that the world is flat, that
                    We are all, after all, mistaken,
And everything is possible.
                             Feasible, logical,
As daylight lost in the traps
                             Of yesterday’s photographs,
We fumble in the path of this morning’s
                                            Own flowering.

                                   This morning, reading
Your text message, I realize that,
                    After the longest years, we still move
Aimlessly, still stay in the same places.
                    What has kept us waiting?
                                                 On my phone,
The old directions—a list of flowers to prepare
                    And pack: anthuriums, gladiolas,
Further bundles of tulips to console the customers—

                                   I count
The flowers; wait for the next bus to Dangwa.
                    I can never trust this distance:
In the next hour, out
                              On the foggy path of Halsema
Highway, the flowers
                         Will remain in journey.

                                   I walk back home, certain that you are
Looking out your window, waiting for the flowers
In the city—for old business in old places,
We wait but

               What is waiting for us?

II.

I can never trust this distance.
Anywhere along the road anything can happen.

Passing Tarlac, the symmetry of flowers sits
Back to watch the havoc of muck and boulders.

                              Outside the bus’s window,
Life’s constant landslide is merely a glance away:

                                             Half-buried houses,
                                   Wounded parapets and backyards,
                                             Wares, vehicles—
                                   Only the vehicles are salvaged.

                                   After the landslide, it seems,
Every second calls to be rescued—
          Clock-ticks before now,

                              Another should have happened.

In Benguet, I shut my window to the cold.
I study the garden and close my hand into a fist until
It warms—

               I read your message telling that
Few of the flowers failed to make the journey intact.
Stalks are damaged; the petals have trips.

Somewhere along the road something else happened.

Can’t you feel that we are always at the edge of all movement—

That always there are fumbles to protect
                         Against, seconds to connect,
Next instances for us to save?

The flowers are braver than us;
                              This is a warning, not an admission.

I shiver and stare
                   At the cold, bleak garden and

Unclose my fist knowing that

This movement is this moment’s blooming

                                                  Root
                                                     And flower.

III.

And morning, mourning bottle green
                    Grass, a day’s disconsolate weather—I wonder

What happened before now: waking up early,
               Watching daylight move through curtains

—-Or before I sent the flowers, before my fist opened,

What is the root beneath the rootedness of living?

You linger at Dangwa, fingers firm around a cigarette.
                         What happened before to move you, make you

Wait for the flowers?
                              Prior to the jeepney, journey
Through half-asleep streets?
                         Each time you step forward always
You keep a foot behind, a root so portable
                         You never realize
It’s there—
                    The invisible fulcrum of life’s continuous torque.

Sometimes, it’s a hand holding a seed,
                         The soil we walk on, flower patch
Of possibilities: I send the flowers; you sell
                         Them—what we need is just

A bus route away,
                         Our comprehension of life’s
Miraculous cause

                              And effect:
                                        The bus pulls up near Dimasalang.
You rise, ready for the flowers. Sometimes, God comes down as a root,
As the possibility of movement. You walk through this pathway, same
Street you walked through yesterday.

Again, the same actions, languages rehearsed by the body—
That’s the way to learn it:
                              I’d do anything to see
And know exactly how
                              The world is prompting your steps right now,
How rooted you are as you bend forward
To pick up the flowers.
                              But that’s a possibility we cannot have
Because no matter how much we learn of our selves,
                    Always this part holes up, a root lodged deep
It keeps us moving, our lives growing like
                                                              Benguet gardens

From our bent backs.