By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

A poem for a good friend, Antonio Gaerlan Hombrebueno, who passed on quietly into the infinite universe.

 

I wake up at this hour

when everything is dark

and I can see the bright moon

and the distant stars

floating like diamonds

 

I see you there, among the diamonds

shining over my puny existence

gazing at Luna stones in a bottle

guessing how many are there

and wondering how much time it will take

to free them from a very tight opening

the size of a twenty-five centavo coin

 

I wonder how they all got there,

inside where there was not much room

to breathe, and where other stones

had fallen, over one another

muted lives washed by the waves

to the seashore

collected, on the cheap, by local hands

transformed and sold, at ten times the price

by foreign interests as ball bearings

 

when you would rather look

at the state of souls

and defy organized religions

I was, as you said,

stoned to the stones

and I am still living with stones

turning them one by one, one at a time

like raw diamonds

even when, they are not

 

so unlike you, them, stones

your face, in perfect cut

brilliant, refracting light

emitting a soft, blue fire

shining, giving illumination

to the imperfections

of unpolished rocks

 

P.S. Yes, like you, I still do not believe in organized religions. The heart of religions can be found in a pebble, or a speck of sand on the seashore.

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