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Poetry
Birder
In celebration of the October 4 feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of the environment and all of God's creatures.
Eyes follow the sound
Ears scan the foliage
Breath on hold
Heart gripped still
Mind wiped clear like the sky in the lake
To await
The moment
The presence.
A...
Shadows of Togetherness
In every harbor, salt clings to skin,
and mothers’ songs drift into dawn,
soft as mango fuzz,
warm as a sun-stroked shoulder.
Markets breathe with spice and voices,
stretching like rope bridges
over rivers carved from memory.
We gather fragments—
grief tasting of smoke and ash,
joy dripping like sugarcane juice,
hope folded...
The Gardener
Flowers grew in the cracks
of the gardener’s calloused hands
as she glanced at the garden she cultivates
She never wanted to disrupt their growth,
yet they need the cutting.
The plants got hurt,
yet they bowed at the gentleness of her pruning.
Her finger bleeds,
yet she will always be...
On Session Road, Remembering Mike de Leon’s Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising
The projector hums. In the theater’s dusk, a flicker unspools
a world. The scent of rice wine and stale popcorn grounds him,
a shadow of a boy who sinks into the creaking vinyl seat.
He came to this darkness seeking a map to a life he...
Still Life with Twelve Sunflowers, after Scrolling
Van Gogh’s sunflowers —
all twelve of them —
so lively, lush,
standing, bending;
they do not submit
to ikebana’s poise
and posture —
golden — no — bronze —
beautiful yet strange.
I am certain
this is the color
of grief thick as impasto,
of desire leaping
like a gazelle,
beyond the canvas’s frame —
wedged in...
GUERILLA DOWNPOUR
There is no warning—
the sky, a sudden insurgent,
opens with
guerrilla downpour.
Torrential rain,
an unrelenting witness,
assaults the fragile spines of trees
and the quiet bones of houses.
Water spills, not as mercy,
but as a force that shatters
the brittle calm we cling to.
In the heart's small orchard,
the fruit...
