Poetry::: When Is a Poem Already a Poem

When Is a Poem Already a Poem

Simeon Dumdum Jr.

I wasn’t listening when you asked that question

I was looking out the window, at the boat

That was just then leaving the port of Dumaguete.

One more day and already I imagined

Myself on that boat, slumped in a chair,

Holding a book like a cup of coffee,

Hoping that during the passage across

The strait I could read without spilling

A word. But then I remembered I still

Had to send someone to buy me a ticket,

And there was your question, and how for the boat

And gone out in the poem of the sea, now

That I wished someone could see the mountains, but not us

Already we had become the Cuernos de Negros