A Momentry

By | 1 March 2018

Father thigh-deep in the sea
lapping gently against his body
carries me against his chest
his free hand peeling seaweed off
my feet his hips
flinging them aside
as he strides forward
stops and shifts me onto his back
then dog paddles into deeper water

Piggyback I look around us
am suddenly afraid cry out
Go back! Go back!
as shore birds flap our way
then veer back heading elsewhere
The dark mass of seaweed sways
between us and the shore

Ahead the sea rolls outward
to the curved sweep of the sky
Over Father’s shoulder
I peer down through glass
sunlight snaking downward
bathing the grassy bottom
sloping deep deep deep
I tighten my arms around his neck

But he holds me up
his pale feet treading water
his hands and arms sweeping the water
like bird wings stroking the air
hovering in place
Don’t look down he says

And I discover I am floating off his back
one hand resting on his shoulder—
blue sweep of sky
sun gilding the water
the warm sea reaching farther than the eye
and Father and I
poised in a moment
like birds hanging in the air

Flown away elsewhere forever


This poem first appeared in Memory’s Mercy: New and Selected Poems (University of the Philippines Press, 2015).

 


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Myrna Peña-Reyes, born and raised in the Philippines of Ilocano stock but Visayan upbringing, was educated at Silliman University (BA English) and the University of Oregon (MFA in creative writing). While a resident of Eugene, Oregon where she lived with her husband for three decades, she was a winner of the Oregon Literary Fellowship for poetry (2002). Presently retired in her hometown of Dumaguete, she continues her volunteer affiliation with Silliman University’s literature and creative writing program that administers the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, the first of its kind in Southeast Asia. Her poetry collections are Memory’s Mercy: New and Selected Poems (University of the Philippines Press, 2015), Almost Home: Poems (University of the Philippines Press, 2004) and The River Singing Stone (Anvil, 1994). She co-edited a poetry anthology with Gémino H Abad, Artemio Tadena This Craft As With A Woman Loved: Selected Poems (U of Santo Tomas Publishing, 2016).

More by Myrna Peña Reyes on Cordite Poetry Review →

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