It is the sea pursues a habit of shores

Our MA class runs like a book club. What happens is, we all six of us sit around a rectangular table, take turns reading passages aloud, and then humbly essay interpretations. Some sessions are more fecund than others. Some nights we simply fill the hours-long silence with the perfunctory oohs and ahhs. Those nights, I feel incredibly unworthy and could not bear to look my professor in the eye. Last night, however, was a good night. Sir Pulan did a reading of Carlos Angeles' "Gabu," a poem about the violent sea. The sea thrashes and batters the shore, rendering it a pitiful shred of wasteland, and leaving an elemental wound, but also, with its every wave, loses something of its self to the shore-- the gift of salt. I have never felt a deeper connection to a poem. I mourned for the sea imprisoned in its eternal pining for the shore, judged for its rage and turbulence. Perhaps its violence is because of its irremediable passion and desperation to be one with the land. It was long before I realized that, as our professor chanted the words about the sea, I was swaying my hands gently, back and forth, like its helpless waves.

Gabu
by Carlos A. Angeles

The battering restlessness of the sea
Insists a tidal fury upon the beach
At Gabu, and its pure consistency
Havocs the wasteland hard within its reach.

Brutal the daylong bashing of its heart
Against the seascape where, for miles around,
Farther than sight itself, the rock-stones part
And drop into the elemental wound.

The waste of centuries is grey and dead
And neutral where the sea has beached its brine,
Where the split salt of its heart lies spread
Among the dark habiliments of Time.

The vital splendor misses. For here, here
At Gabu where the ageless tide recurs
All things forfeited are most loved and dear.

It is the sea pursues a habit of shores.