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.

Jon E. Royeca

Jon E. Royeca has two history degrees: a bachelor’s from CAP Foundaion (an alternative learning school, and a master’s from the University of the Philippines Diliman. He writes in Filipino and English, and has published since 2000 more than 200 short storiet, essays, and poems in various local magazines. He authored Jose Rizal: How,Filipinos Hailed Him as Their Greatest Hero, and An Institutional History of the National Archives of the Philippines (1889-2019), published in 2022 and 2023, respectively, by Central Boks, Inc.