Woman
Woman is daylight
Woman is God’s garden
Woman is rib of creation
Woman is legend
Woman is myth and miracle
Woman is spring
Woman is hope
Woman is faith
Woman is love
Woman is fruit and seed
Woman is tenderness
Woman is courage
Woman is half the sky
Woman is vision
Woman is destiny
Woman is devotion
Woman is earth and wind
Woman is water and fire
Woman is breadth and width
Woman is Isis and Saraswati
Woman is grace
Woman is energy
Woman is passion
The wisdom of the womb
Mother
Because she is fruit and seed.
I, her daughter, am bud and
Blossom of her distinct word.
Because she is clan and garden,
She is my soil, range and fence,
The circle and compass of my lines.
Because she is essence and origin
She is vim of my roots and vigor of my skin,
She is wing and wind of my poems.
Because she is crux and mountain,
She is the reason for my seasons,
The melody of my morning songs.
She is my theme and thought,
The speech I hear from the rain,
The whisper of faith when I’m lost.
Merlita Lorena Tariman
Merlita Lorena Tariman writes poetry in three languages: English, Filipino, and Bikol. Some of her previous work appeared
in various periodicals—Focus, Sunday Times magazine, Inquirer magazine, Woman Today, Filmag, Diyaryo Filipino—and
in three anthologies:Ang Silid na Mahiwaga by Soledad S.Reyes (1994), Hagkus by Paz Verdades M. Santos (2003), and
Sagurong by Paz Verdades M. Santos and Kristian Sendon Cordero (2011). Her first Bikol-Filipino poetry collection,
Pinatubo At Iba Pang Tula, was published in 2014, through a grant from the National Commission for Culture and the
Arts. Most of her poems were published under two by-lines, M.M. Lorena Tariman and Merlita Lorena Tariman.
