By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

SISTER Mary John Mananzan, a Missionary Benedictine activist nun from Bayambang, Pangasinan, told me that on one of her trips to Tagaytay, she followed a bluebird and it stopped at a property in Mendez, Cavite. It was in this property where the Women and Ecology Wholeness Farm was established by the Institute of Women’s Studies (IWS), a 1.2 hectare fruit and coffee farm, in 1997.  The Ecofarm, as it is also called, “demonstrates an alternative lifestyle that is environment friendly, junk-free and sustainable.  It practices organic, bio-diverse farming, and biogas-based waste management.” It is the habitat of many wild flora and fauna, including birds. Bluebirds, too, although rarely seen, come for a quick stop, in transit to meet humans who follow their instincts and act on their inspirations.

 

Bluebird

I stopped to walk in the garden
where I used to walk,
smell the morning, taste the rain
bathe with the moonlight
my feet didn’t ache, it was an ache
that refuses to be found, hiding within
piercing the heart

it’s not the usual heartache,
it’s the blood, i think, refusing to flow
in the same vein, rupturing
making new paths
paths paved with danger
the unknown, maybe
death

gardens, caressed by your hands
have a way of soothing
of seducing, a space of stillness
a stillness that lulls
whose demise kills
a part of you, no, not a part
the whole of you

there’s a fairy-bluebird, hovering
braving the wind and the rain
I follow its path, with my eyes
circling on the berries, searching
taking rest, on a leaf
then, it flew, shaking off
the weight of the raindrops

I wonder, I wander once again
knowing, some things find us
in their own search,
or their wandering, or their wonder
despite ourselves

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