He Thinks Sounds Succumb to Extinction

Perhaps he no longer

gives the same attention

to the sounds that once

fed his senses:

like the inconsolable

sounds of waves through

an empty conch;

the raspy blows produced

when his neighbor

winnows the newly-milled rice,

letting the winds trawl for bran;

the noise of a peddler making

a pitch for his bread of salt

at dawn.

Or perhaps these are replaced

by the loud silence of his

laments for his father.

when grandmother’s gone

why is it that the sunbird no

longer builds her nest

under the eaves of grandma’s

decades-old abode?

i remember her room was

once a bethel of assorted scents

the pungent, Marian

smell of dried Rosal from her

altar and the smell of her katinko

at night, there’s a

tumultuous silence:

no more “o clement,

o loving, o sweet Virgin Mary”

and no more gibberish

recital of the litany.

when grandma’s gone, it

seems her spell and her

grace have traveled with her.

and in the garden, her

moth orchid has ceased

to flower.