Gone poetic for awhile
By Emmanuelle

 

One crosses the street and one steps into – another world – a place of peace, beauty and simplicity to give respite to weary or troubled souls, where one’s bare feet find a home on the grass and cobbled stones for pathways, where trees are tall and the sky makes all things small. When the water whooshes down the man-made falls, it hushes the noise of spoken words to faraway nothing. One brings one’s child, or the once-child – no matter, the place welcomes one and all.

I talk not of eternal gardens, but of a park right in front of the Sangguniang Bayan Hall of an eastern Pangasinan town. It had been named and renamed so many times; but there is only one name that matters. It is The Friendship Park. The Mayor’s wife had thought and planned for such a place; she had even overseen the planting of the first blade of grass, the placing of the first block of hewned rock; Balikbayan donations and proceeds from souvenir programs of past town fiestas had funded it; and the municipal  gardeners and janitors had watered it green and swept it clean.

I was caught in frozen time – I was just passing through, but the park wasn’t through with me; it stayed in my heart. Forever.

For a change, I have gone poetic. The following poem I dedicate to the victims of the Philsports Arena stampede. And to all those who have lost their lives in pursuit of a dream.

REVERIE AT DUSK
And lo, your voyage ends
where all began.
Ah, the languor of it,
the last frenzied surging
as your colors flee
and you waver
between here
and gone.

Was it only just then
you burst through the mantel
of darkness? from dawn                        
you climbed the morn,
hovered and glowered at noon,
and moments after
your embrace hugged both
in love and shame
this world of
beasts and men?

When down you wend
in descending skyway,
i chased your homing swerve
to here, the end of nowhere.

You flaunt your cast-off robe
of purpled dye and orange flints
in a ballet dip
of lingering farewell.
And this solitary soul
is draped in the satin shadows
of your flailed veil.

By these rocks
honed and hollowed,
grass unscurried
by prints of haste,
and wind to fluster
the sometime chaste,
I mourn in splendour
the end of yet
another day.
 

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