On her windowsill
Mother keeps a small garden.
A patch of many shapes and colors.
Old twigs coaxing unborn leaves.
Subversive thorns caring for vari-colored blooms.
Plants and essences that cure
Toothaches and loneliness.
Here, she wields the power.
She drinks deep from her own gospel.
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.
