“Look!” she exclaimed.
I followed her clue toward
the glinting blue, and I saw
a flock of birds on an expedition.
As if on cue, they fly together
through miles and miles of sky,
throughout their long route
above paths of rivers and over
margins of hills.
They are pilgrims, she claimed,
going the usual distance season
after season of their celebration
of a voyage.
Like how you, too, move across
beliefs, whether you figure out
your own escape route or not,
or skip your biases above
your misery and lack of conviction.
Then she said it again,
“The ocean is calm today.
So let me hold your hand!”
The clouds are happy up there,
as the world turns. The dragonflies
flit by down here, their gauzy wings
luminous under the sun.
And we keep our faith in them.
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.
