SUDDENLY, IT IS EVENING

The room is wide
this morning
as wide as your pain 

somewhere in a corner
of remembered remembering. 
Where were you when the sea
was bereft of broken beer bottles
and crumpled tin cans?

Last night the rainbowed jukebox
blared your song
while the smoke-filled bar
echoed with drunker laughter 
and your epilogue of wasted
years.
It should have been this way---
no, no, no, it could have been that way.
The sun lingering on the glass panes
has now climbed the rooftops.
Remembering is a perfect blade
as sharp as the edge of morning.
Time for you is a dry leaf
on a hot windless day
yet ricebirds must cry
as the pulse of life beats
in the shuffle of many feet
on the stage where the drama
was played.
You remember the innocence
of youth in the old hometown
and suddenly, it is evening.*

*included in the expanded edition of the  Ilokano and English poetry anthology, "Umayka Manen, Ganggannaet/Come Again, Stranger," with critical introduction by Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.