What does it say that we come from an ocean

people, surrounded by water, and none of us

really knows how to swim? I know how to not

drown, but can’t swing a stroke, only paddle.

A dog fetching my breath further and further

from my hot mouth. And what of floating on 

the surface? Age has made me increasingly 

sick on the ocean more than once—what 

would my ancestors make of my weakness, 

my inability to hold the horizon’s movements 

in balance, this propensity for vertigo? Bakit, 

anak? I have no answer for how we travelled 

so far there’s no going back. I am a landlubber, 

a child of cars driving past acres of corn and tobacco.

I walk through fields of wheat, rippling a golden sea.