It’s on Sunday mornings,
When I walk toward stores
To replenish a week’s supply of grocery items,
That I see you.
Old surviving trees.
The dignified narra,
The unfurling dapdap,
And the humongous (and ominous) balete,
Still gracing ancient streets deep in the city,
Shading the sidewalks,
And dispersing beauty:
The green leaves,
The rough barks,
The narra’s yellow flowers,
The dapdap’s fiery blossoms,
And the balete’s roots:
frail if still hanging,
or tough as trunks when already
fixed on the ground.
I had talked with wrinkled folks.
They claimed that years ago,
Sunrays could nimbly kiss the sidewalks,
For the trees lined the streets close to each one.
Unlike now when they are vanishing,
Like the lovely houses being torn down
after having stood for decades,
So that the skies can be scraped.
The city, which is hastening away from antiquity,
is guilty of murder.
These days mark its last attempts of committing it.
Seeing the careless mobility,
I surmise that a few years from now,
The trees will all be gone,
And the city will be baked by the wrath of the sun.
