A Favorite Poem

Recently, I added to my file of favorite poems “Manunggul Jar” by Luisa A. Igloria, first published in Mud Season Review, Issue 16 (January 20, 2016). The poem recalls Wallace Stevens’ “Anecdote of the Jar.”

MANUNGGUL JAR

(Manunggul Cave, Palawan; late Neolithic)

Someone is loosing the rope

that tethered our boat

to the pier. Here we are, easing

forward into the fog, into the cold

that seems to have gotten colder.

We’ll pass the shuttered town,

we’ll slip into the currents

blue with the ink of unborn stars.

We’ll love them no less, no more,

even as the water swirls, changing

from jade to milk. The world we enter

then leave is round as the bowl of our

desires, and here the word for horizon

is the same as faithfulness: invisible

rudder our hands have always held,

even as now we cross our arms

across our chests, preparing

to travel farther, deeper.

Luisa A. Igloria

Manunggul burial jar