Poems

 

POEMS

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

QUERIES FOR THE ALMIGHTY, ON COVID-19
 
The lengthening list of the dead and dying,
the shock and unspeakable pain of those who have suddenly been left behind,
the inexpressible terror this pandemic has sown in our hearts —
are these your way of scourging us for the sins we have committed?
Are they the crown of thorns you want to thrust upon our heads
for the wrongs we have done?
 
Yet, your Son spared the adulterous woman who, by Law,
should have been stoned to death.
He forgave the thief who was rightfully crucified by his side.
He even died on the cross for us — even if
we had not even acknowledged our sins.
 
Is this crisis, then, your way of testing our faith in you?
Is it your thirst for mankind’s reassurance of its trust in your power and love
that’s prompting you to do this to us?
 
Yet, if you are indeed our Loving Father as you claim you are,
how can you afford to see us suffer so much
just to measure the depth of our trust?
The fathers among us will never do that to their children;
and frankly, they cannot and they will never understand
how you can do it to yours.
 
Others say that you had nothing to do with the coming of this plague —
that it is the result of humanity’s irresponsibility, greed and malice.
It’s the dire consequence of other men’s abuse of nature,
some declare;  while still others allege that it was created as a weapon
by one group of men to be used against other men.
 
But if all that is true, why didn’t you do something
to stop the plague from coming?  Why does it seem like
you are merely sitting there — indifferently watching
the old, the sick, and the poor among us die from this disease,
 while the rest of us fearfully wonder who among us would fall next?
 
Almighty God, our questions beg for answers
that seem like a million lightyears away.  All we hear are echoes
 of our desperate prayers for the sound of your voice.
And we cannot help repeating your dying Son’s cry: 
“Our God, Our God, why have You abandoned us?”
 
Yet, in the midst of the silence, something tells us
that we are not really alone.  That you are right here beside us.
That there is method in this madness —  a reason we cannot grasp now, 
but which we will fully understand when it’s all over at last.
 
Almighty God, help us then to be unafraid despite our fears;
to remain strong despite our weakening spirits;  and to look up from this cross
 to the vast sky above us,  where your Face has always shone
 to shatter into pieces our darkest hours.

THE  ETERNAL REMEMBERER

“All of us are creatures of a day; the  remembererer and the remembered alike.”
 -- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
 
Everyday you strive hard to leave behind
Something you will be remembered by –
A shining thought on a page,
A good deed engraved in the minds of men,
A feeling caught in a net of words
Or trapped in a web of melodies…
You spend the minutes and hours
Of your passing days
Desperately writing your name
On the walls and mountainsides of Time.
 
What for  is all this striving
To be still recalled long after you are gone?
Why this stubborn rebellion
Against your irreversible fate?
Like everyone else’s, your life on earth
Is nothing but a desert sand
Forever blown away by the winds of Time.
The footprints you leave behind today
Will be gone tomorrow.
Even the castles you have built,
Sturdy as they may seem,
Will not withstand the raids of change.
 
Ah, but somewhere out there
Someone has been lovingly
Watching your every move,
Listening to every sound you make,
Reading every thought you form –
Including the ones you have left unspoken.
He gazes upon you everyday as though
You are all that mattered in the world.
 
 And when the last of your rememberers
Himself becomes a fading remembrance,
He will still be there watching you,
Knowing your name by heart,
And holding the grains of the life you have lived
As if no jewel on earth
Could ever surpass their worth.
 
 

COUNTERPOINT TO EMMA LAZARUS’S
“The New Colossus”*

 Mother of Exiles (as the poetess named you),
I sail to you not aboard an immigrant’s ship
But a tourist ferry.   And, no, 
 I have not come here to stay…
I have merely come to take a quick look
At your famed figure – a visitor who shall soon
Sail away from your shores and fly back home.
 
But, the longer I gaze at you, Mother of Exiles,
The more I realize what an exile I, too, am.
Though I am neither poor nor tired
Nor homeless; though I am not
A wretched refuse from my country’s
Teeming shore (to borrow the lady bard’s words),
Something inside me yearns to break free.
From what chains?   I do not know.
Or, perhaps, I merely refuse to know.
 
Pray, mighty woman with that flaming torch,
Pray that, wherever I shall be from here, from now,
My exile’s heart will finally find
Its own New World of fresh beginnings
And shining dreams waiting to be born.
 

 *“The New Colossus” is a sonnet written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 to
 help raise funds for the construction of the pedestal of the Statue of
Liberty on Liberty Island,  New York.  Lazarus’s  poem is
  inscribed on a plaque at the pedestal’s entrance.

THROUGH THE FIRST MAN’S EYES

 
May my eyes be forever new.
May they never be blinded
By the wisdom of the world,
Nor be obscured by the pride that soon afflicts
Those who think they have seen
All there is to see.
 
May the day’s tasks
(no matter how important)
Never chain my gaze to the ground,
Nor my care as my brother’s keeper
Hinder me from looking up at the sky.
 
May I never close my eyes at night
Without having seen a star,
Or at least glimpsed its reflection
In someone’s face.
 
May I never forget to marvel
At the moon, nor fail to be smitten
By the beauty of a flower.
 
Let time and its ruthless armies
Plunder my flesh and run away laughing
With their merciless loot.
 
But may they spare my eyes’ desire
Always to see things again for the first time,
The way Adam must have seen them
On his first day in Eden.
 

GLIMPSES OF THE JOURNEY’S END

How shall I meet my end, oh Lord?

How shall it meet me?

Will it stab me in the back

 at an hour I least expect,

 with the perfidy of Brutus and his cohorts 

on the ides of March

 ages and ages ago?

 

Will it first kiss me on the cheek,

then allow me to be led away and scourged,

till I myself shall beg it

to spread ashes, without delay, 

on my life’s dying embers?

 

Will it come to take me home

with the calmness of an autumn wind

carrying a lifeless leaf in its arms?

Or will it uproot me from life

with the violence of a raging storm

devoid of mercy?

 

However my end shall be,

I have but one wish, oh Lord…

just one prayer:

 

That when I awake from that final sleep,

it shall be your face –

your infinitely loving and forgiving face --

that my eyes shall see. 

SILENCED PRAYER

 Why is it that, nowadays, when I wish
to speak in verses, my heart
turns to You –
 
like a faithless lover
suddenly longing for the love
he had abandoned;
 
like a wayward son
overcome by an unexpected
 yearning for the home
he had left behind?
 
It is as if poetry were the key
that unlocks the cage in which
I have imprisoned You all these years.
 
Enough of this self-invented myth
that I  have no need of You.
 
Let this poem in the making
Shed its veil and reveal what it really is:
 
a prayer I have tried
to silence for so long
but cannot hold back
any longer.
 

AN OLD SUPPLICANT’S
NEW PRAYER
(Variation on a theme by Rabindranath Tagore)
 
Give me only what my hands can hold.
Those that I can no longer carry;
Those that will only topple down
 The rest of your gifts;
Those that can cause me to
Stumble and fall on account
Of their weight –
Refuse to give them to me
No matter how loudly
I beg them of you.
 
Pour into the earthen jug of my life
Only as much wine as it can contain.
The drops that will only overflow
And go to waste in the rain-drenched soil;
Those that will ultimately
Crack and shatter this
Fragile vessel I call my soul –
Withhold them from me
No matter how wildly I
Clamor for them.
 
Turn a deaf ear to the stubborn
Pleas of this silly child of yours
Who knows no satisfaction.
 
Give me only what I
Truly need – and that alone.
The rest, I know,
Will only bring me ruin.

 

 AIDE MEMOIRE ON ASH WEDNESDAY

Remember, man, that it is not
 Just you who are dust -- 
even the works of your hands,
Great and small, are themselves dust.
The faint praises you have reaped,
The modest fortunes you have saved,
The precarious power you have built
With blood, sweat and tears
 (yours as well as others’)
Will one day turn into ashes.
Not a trace of the footprints
You have carefully left behind
Shall last forever. 
You were fashioned out of nothing,
And unto nothing you shall return.
 
Stop fooling yourself into thinking
That you can outwit death
By creating things
You can later be remembered by.
 
Begin, rather, to turn
Your unstoppable decay
Into a conscious offering of yourself
To your Maker.  And trust that
He who formed you
In your mother’s womb
Will surely not allow Nothingness
To be the last word on your life.
 

  THE GRAVEYARDS UNDER OUR SKIN

There are graveyards under our skin —
Hidden places in our minds and hearts
Where we have secretly buried
The things that used to give life to our living:
The innocence of our childhood
Battered to death by the hard facts of life
We had learned to bear with as we grew up;
The dreams of our youth
Whose wings no longer wish to fly
After failing to do so too often;
The shattered pieces of the loves we had given
That were ungratefully returned.
There they lie, unknown and unmourned
By no one but ourselves;
Their spirits unwilling to leave and move on,
Desperately clinging to the hope that, someday,
Some miracle worker would pass by their gravestones
And, perhaps, bring them back to life again.

Come with us, Risen Lord, and together
Let us make a visit to those burial places
Underneath our skin.
 
Place your hands on the dry
And lifeless bones of our childhood innocence;
On the broken wings of our disenchanted dreams;
On the dead loves inside our hearts.
Raise them back to life, we beg of you,
The way you did to your friend Lazarus;
The way you yourself rose from the
Dead on a Sunday morning like this,
ages and ages ago.

AN INNKEEPER RUES A NIGHT,
A MYRIAD WINTERS AGO 

If only I knew that the child she was carrying in her womb
was no less than the Son of God, I would have moved heaven
and earth to offer the best room in my inn for the three of them.
 
I would have concocted a plausible reason for my most valued
customer to immediately vacate his room --  such as, that
a highly-placed person (who preferred to remain incognito
at the moment) urgently required a room for himself and his
spouse.  If he refused to give way, I would have insinuated to my
unbelieving guest that the mighty person in question would never
take no for an answer, and that to turn down his request
(which was really an order in disguise) could cost us both our
heads.  And if that ploy didn’t work, I would have offered my
own room to the three of them instead. I would not have minded
sleeping in the manger that cold night, so that the Son of God could
 have a place to be born worthy of the King of Kings.
 
But no.  I didn’t know that then. Or perhaps, I was too dazzled by
the thought of how much profit I could make from the sudden
increase of customers that night to realize that a woman about to
give birth to a child deserved to have a room; and that a
newborn baby — no matter who or whose it was —certainly
did not belong in a manger.
 
Alas, alas, all this happened ages and ages ago, and I have no
way of turning back the hands of time to undo what I had
done, and do what I should have done.
 
So listen to me now, Stranger:  know that your heart is likewise an inn;
and every day you are given the priceless chance to offer
 the best room in that inn to the Son of God who, today,
 comes in the flesh of an undernourished child knocking on the
 window of your car; and, tomorrow, appears in the guise of an old man,
 alone in a house he used to call home, yearning for someone who
would make him feel that he still counts, no matter how poor
and seemingly useless he has now become.
 
He comes to you in the form of a crowd of refugees running away
from a country torn apart by war, or reduced by famine to a field
 of scattered corpses, hoping to find a better life in some strange
land.  He appears in the guise of people condemned by those
who think they have the power to determine what is right and
wrong, what is moral and immoral; to declare who deserves
to live and who deserves to die...
 
The Son of God comes to you in countless different
ways, some of which you would never have imagined that the
King of Kings would take, just to find a road to your heart.
 
I pray, Stranger, that  —
in your own selfishness and pride — you would not fall into the
same mistake that I made that cold, strange night,
when I turned down the best Gift
I could ever have held in my hands,
a myriad winters ago.
 

 A CRADLESONG FOR NANAY
  
When we remember you, Nanay,
may we remember not so much the old lady
rendered frail and helpless by the crashing waves
of eighty-nine years…
 
May we remember, rather,
the strong young mother who,
although widowed at thirty-eight, managed to build
for her children (and her children’s children)
a world much brighter than the one she had seen.
 
When we revisit the alleys of our yesteryears, Nanay,
may it be your loving heart we recall;
may  it be the warmth of your guiding hand we remember;
and not so much the things you had to do
(which we did not always understand)
because of love.
 
The solitary sting of a rose’s thorn
can make one forget
the tender touch of its petals.
The matchless music of the rain can be drowned out
by the dull noise of its drops.
 
When we summon you
out of the chambers of forgetting, Nanay,
may we recall the petals and not the thorns,
the music and not the noise of the rain.
 
And when our lives turn (as they often do)
into heartless arenas and cruel battlefields
where only the strong can survive,
may we remember the fighter that you were
all your life long,
and draw strength from the thought
that in our veins runs the blood of one fearless lady
who had remained, till death,
undaunted and unbowed
by life’s arrows and blows.
 

 THERE, WHERE THE PATH ENDS
 (A poem for Father Manuel Lamprea)
 
 
The five of us met at the summit of our youth, at a time
When each of us was bent on drinking from the wine-jug of life
Everything that it contained.
 
Within the boundaries of The Path we had chosen to follow,
We explored life like reckless adventurers, determined to
Make the most of that brief moment which we knew we
Would never have the chance to pass through again.
 
In our carefree quests, we often found ourselves wondering
About what lay beyond the frontiers of that Path —
The homes we could never build, the loves we could never
Have and hold as our own, the human joys that would forever
Be forbidden to our hearts. And there were nights and days
When we could not help but wish we had taken a different
Road instead, one where there would be no fetters on our feet.
 
In time, three of us left The Path and took our places in the
World where, we realized, we truly belonged; while you and
Hurley stayed on, drawing strength from The Shepherd who
Led us to that Path, back in our days of youth and innocence.
 
You are with Him now at last, dear friend... in the arms
Of that Someone for whom you have surrendered everything.
 
You are with Him now…  Him whose hand you must have
Grasped tightly in your dark nights; whose Word was the raft you
Must have stubbornly clung to in your stormy seas.
 
Rest now in peace, dear friend — but remain restless for these
Friends you have left behind.  From your blissful chamber in
God’s House, keep looking out its windows, wondering about how
We are all doing down here in the world. Cut not the cords that
Bind you to our lives. For our friendship recognizes no end, and
Death is but another adventure that you, Hurley, Perpy, Reymil and I
Shall recount for one another when we all meet again --
There, where the path ends.
 

 ELEGY FOR TITA PACING
 
Blest with the priceless grace of daughters
But bereft of the gift of sons,
You probably found in the five of us
The sons you would have wanted to have
But never had.
 
You must have longed to love us as your own sons
But, knowing that we could never be yours,
Settled for loving us from a distance.
 
You became a part of our lives without
Encroaching upon the sacred spaces
Reserved for our true mothers alone.
 
Today, on this day of your going away,
Our hearts and thoughts wing back to you
Across the seas of time and space.
 
In spirit,
Bong, Perpy, Hurley, Reymil and I
Gather this day around your lifeless remains
To celebrate your life.
 
We hardly really knew you.
We barely knew the inner struggles
You must have waged;
The joys and pains you must have gone through;
The tears and laughter you must have known;
The triumphs and disappointments that must have
Brushed the canvas of your life --
As a woman, as a wife, as a mother,
And eventually, as a grandmother….
 
Yet, the little that we knew about you
Gave us so much more than just a glimpse
Of the greatness of your heart.  

Fly, fellow traveler,
Fly towards that unknown land
Beyond this world’s horizons
Where God awaits mothers like you...
Where their tears become raindrops
And their sorrows become songs,
Where their pains turn into rainbows
Over rivers of joy.
 

  SONGS OF LOVE
IN THE KEY OF SILENCE 

Papang, you were a man of few words,
and you were particularly diffident
when it came to words of love.
 
Yet, although you rarely expressed your love in words,
there was never a doubt in our minds
that you loved us, and that you loved us dearly.
The things you did, the sacrifices you willingly
but silently undertook for our sake,
spoke of your love in ways that no language in the world,
and no word in any language, could ever do.
 
We heard your unspoken words of love
in the way you worked very hard, day after day,
to give us all a better life than what you had.
We heard your soundless words of love
in the way you helped us build our dreams;
in the manner in which you formed us
with a potter’s strong but gentle hands.
 
You did not see the need to tell us
how much you loved us. The lexicon of your heart
consisted of concrete deeds, not of hollow utterances;
and your songs of love were always sung
in the key of silence.
 
Yet, when illness struck your flesh and you realized
that death was near, you finally unlocked
the door of your heart and let your words of love
fly all over us like a thousand butterflies set free.
You let them fall on our heads like a myriad petals
from some secret garden in the sky.
They poured upon our hearts like gentle rain
finally quenching the thirst of a parched expanse of earth.
 
You were a man of few words, Papang,
and you were particularly diffident
when it came to words of love.
 
But the God who gave you to us as a Gift
made sure that, when He finally called you back,
you were going to leave behind you the gift
you’ve always wanted to give but could not give
until you reached the end of your days —
those priceless of words of love we freely exchanged
while you desperately tried to overcome your illness
and slowly surrendered to the truth that,
in a little while,
you would be with us
no more.
 
 

REQUIEM FOR MY FATHER
 
As a boy, your friends called me your carbon copy,
 for I looked so much like you, except for my size.
Young as I was, I knew you took that as a compliment,
for what father would not be proud to be told
 that his son is his spitting image?
 
Yet, as I grew older, you must have realized
that we were not so similar after all.
You found joy in the solid exactitude of numbers;
 I preferred the fluid delights of written words
and musical sounds.
You loved to build things with your hands.
 I preferred to pass my time creating things
 that practical men would hardly find any use for.
 In time, even the roads I chose often differed
from what you would have chosen if you were in my shoes.
 
But you always did your best to respect our differences
and even took pride in what I had become, albeit
 it was not exactly what you wished I had turned out to be.
 
More often now, when I chance upon my reflection
in glass doors and shop windows,
I see the man you were when you were my age;
and I am seized by the realization that we were cut
 from the same cloth in more ways than merely physical.
 
You have now arrived at your journey’s end.
 
Mine is still a long way off, and I have many,
many more miles to tread.
 
Pray that I shall complete my journey
 with the same dignity and courage
with which you completed yours.
May I one day close my eyes for the very last time
with the same thought with which
you must have closed your own —
 
“I have fought the good fight.
I have finished the race.
I have kept the faith.”
 

POEMS FOR MY BELOVED WIFE, ALICE 

A POEM FOR ALICE
 
How shall I thank you
for the way you’ve loved me all this time?
For the way you’ve embraced
the whole of who I am – scars, warts and all?
 

I let you see the ugliness
 behind the many masks I wear.
You always look beyond the surface
And behold the splendor of what’s within. 

I let my tears fall, without shame,
like grieving rain upon your shoulders.
You do not just wipe the tears away. 
You allow them to flow from my eyes, unembarrassed,
until the hidden wellsprings
 from which they come run dry.
 
I let you sense my unspoken fears;
you help me try to conquer them.
 
I let you know of my secret dreams;
you help me make them come true.
 
And when the very stars upon which I wish
start falling down from the skies,
you are right there to catch them with me.
 
Oh, how shall I thank you
for the love you’ve shown me all this time?
For  the laughter, the color and the music
 you have poured into the earthen cup of my existence?
 
To promise to love you forever is not enough.
To pledge my entire heart will not suffice.
 
I want to love you
beyond the unseen borders of forever.
And I pledge not just the whole of my heart,
but all the lives I’ve lived and will yet live
in this never-ending spiral called Life.

 A PAEAN TO OUR LOVE

 Will our love still be there for us
When the wine of romance runs out
And the water of ordinary days takes its place
On the table of our life?
 
Will our love manage to hold us together
When our differences become stronger
 Than the things that make us alike?
 
And when our hairs turn gray,
Our lips run dry,
And our eyes lose the luster of their youth,
Will the candle of love keep burning
On the altar of our hearts?
 
Time alone can tell
How true and strong our love is.
 
Yet, when I recall the times we’ve been through,
The storms we have weathered
 And the autumns and winters
 We have valiantly survived,
I know that nothing can ever come between us
That we cannot somehow surmount.
 
Beloved, I know our love will still be there for us,
 Even when the things we dread
Come proudly breaking through our doors.
 

 OF LOVE AND TIME
 
 Some say time is a line --
With a beginning and an end.
 
Others say it is a circle – with neither
A beginning nor an end – appearing to be
In motion but, in fact, only retracing
Its steps again and again and again.
 
Some say time is like one of those
Fireworks we witness on festive nights,
That start off from some point and scatter
In different directions, leaving no trace
Whatsoever of their brilliance
In the sky.
 
If time is a line, I want us to
Travel through it together till the end.
If I get there ahead, I will not go
Inside whatever it is that awaits us there
 Until you yourself have arrived.
 I know that you will do the same
For me, should the reverse happen.
 
If time is a circle, may our paths
Always meet.  I will not mind
Waiting a hundred years to
Finally have a chance to catch
 A glimpse of your face again.
 
And if time is a firework that is here
Today and utterly gone tomorrow,
May our ashes fall on the same spot
In God’s Mystery,  where time
And space lose their significance
And lovers like us become
Eternally one again.
 

WITHOUT YOU
 
 Like the sky devoid of stars –
that’s how my life will be without you.
Like the earth bereft of the sun
(without warmth, without a center) –
that’s how cold and lost my heart will feel
when you’re no longer around.
Have you ever seen a carnival
without sideshows and rides?
Or a birthday cake without a single candle?
What would a cocktail party be without spirits?
Or a wedding ceremony without a groom and a bride?
That’s how I will be without you.
I will be music without melody,
poetry without words,
worship without a god...
 
That is why when Death whispers into my ear
and reminds me of the inevitable fate of all life...
Or when the shifting of the seasons
confronts me with the bitter truth
that nothing and no one can run away
from the borderless empire of Change --
I close my eyes and beg God
not to spare me but to take me with you
when the hour comes for you to go.
For, Love, I would rather bid this world goodbye,
along with all its joys and magic,
than walk its roads
 without you.

LETTING LOVE LEAD

 With everything else in my life,
I let my mind do the leading.
But when it came to you,
I let my heart show me the way.
 
I trusted the words that it said to me
In whispers, and turned a deaf ear to
The voices of sages in my head.
I grasped its hand and followed its steps,
Even when I barely had an inkling of
Where we were going.
 
When it came to you,
I let my heart have the last word --
And the years have proven that
I had been right to do so.
 
For you were the shining shore I finally
Reached when I let the waves carry
Me where they wanted.
 
You were the sunrise whose golden
Splendor filled my eyes with wonder
When I allowed the dawn to rouse me
From my sleep.
 
You were the silent music I heard
From the flowers in that nearby field,
When they let the wind blow among
Them as it willed.
 
So, when it comes to you,
I shall always, always let my heart
Have the last say.  And I know
That when I reach the end of my days,
I shall close my eyes with the grateful
Thought that the heart is, indeed, so much
Wiser than we are wont to give it credit for.

 

WRITTEN IN THE STARS
 
There must have been a pair of unseen hands
That tirelessly reconfigured the geography of my life
To make sure that every road I walked,
Every river I crossed,
Every sea I sailed,
And every sky I flew in
Would eventually lead me to where you were.
 
There must have been a hidden drummer
To the peculiar beat of whose drum
My feet meekly marched without their knowing it,
Or a Pied Piper in many disguises
Whose tune I could not help but follow around –
Both of whom intended all along
To bring me to where you were.
 
For how else could I explain
 That strange conspiracy of events and circumstances,
That surprising confluence of our lives’ twists and turns
Which made our meeting each other seem as
Inevitable as Destiny itself?
 
Whose were those unseen hands?
Who was that hidden drummer?  And that disguised
Pied Piper – who was he?
 
Was he God, or Fate, or Chance?
 
Whoever he was,
Whatever it was,
 It does not really matter much to me now.
 
For I would gladly march
To the beat of that hidden drummer,
And follow that disguised Pied Piper around
A hundred, nay a thousand times over,
Now that I know what awaits me
At the end of the road.
  
 

 THE DAY YOUR PRINCE
TURNED OUT TO BE A FROG
  
There surely was a time in our life when this man
whom you thought was your God-sent prince
turned out to be a frog –
a husband not much different from most other husbands;
a run-of-the-mill spouse who sometimes forgets
to bring you flowers on days you consider very special; 
a boy in a man’s body who often leaves things  
around the house in places where they should not be left; 
a workaday chap whose interests do not always match  
your high-browed own.
 
Was it good old Pope John the 23rd who said
that men are like wine -- 
Some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age?
I have always tried hard to be counted among the latter;
but as to whether my efforts have paid off, what do I know?
 
Yet, though I probably ceased to be a prince a long time ago,
you have continued to adore me as though I wore
an invisible crown on my head.
 
You have seen me fall off my horse a few times;
you have felt my hand quiver a bit at the sight of dragons
I must slay lest I be slain by;
you have caught a glimpse of the diffident lad
inside my shining armour…  yet
you have kept your faith in me through it all.
 
Come closer…
Kiss me once more, the way you kissed me that very first time.
This frog may never turn into a prince again,
but that’s alright.
He knows you love him,
and that’s all that really matters in his world.

 

 A HYMN FOR THE DAYS OF YOUR LIFE
 
I bless the day you greeted this world
with your very first cry.
I bless the sunlight that kissed your face
on the first of your days.
 I bless the womb that bore you,
the arms that held you,
 the hands that nursed and cared for you
 when you were little.
I bless the first word you ever uttered,
the first step you ever took.
I bless that defining moment when you fell and cried,
 but decided to stand up and try all over again.
I bless the first riddle you ever understood,
the first balloon you ever drew,
the first song you ever sang,
 the first poem you ever recited.
 
I cry over the moment when someone
 broke your heart for the very first time,
 and wish I had been there to wipe your tears away.
I celebrate the dreams that came true for you
and mourn the dreams that were broken into pieces.
 But I bless the way their shattering made your heart
 wiser and stronger in the end.
 
I bless all the choices that you made in your life —
the ones you felt proud of and the ones you regretted,
the ones that brought you joy
and the ones that gave you pain.
 For you would not have been
the same woman I fell in love with
  if the journey of your life had taken a different route.
 
I sanctify all the roads you’ve ever walked in your life,
all the oceans you’ve ever sailed,
all the skies you’ve ever crossed.
I give thanks to the unseen hands that led your feet
to the doorstep of my life,
and ushered you all the way
to the innermost sanctuary of my heart.
 
My unborn soul must have waited
a long, long time for you, 
somewhere in this unfolding mystery of time and space.
And when the good news of your birth
broke out in the heavens,
 I must have been the little angel that sang
 the whole day in praise of God
for creating the most beautiful girl
he had ever seen!
 

A YULETIDE CAROL
BEYOND WORDS AND SOUNDS
(For my beloved Mamang)
 
In this season of gifts and bells and carols,
how shall I sing a song of thanks
to her without whom I would never have been born —
to the woman who lovingly carried me in her womb
and put her life on the line
so that my own life on this earth could begin?
 
How shall I give thanks to her
who took care of me when I was little;
 who helped me utter my very first word
and take my very first step;
who patiently helped me build the ship of my life
so I could one day put out to sea,
with courage and with unquenchable hope?
 
When life’s trials took the wind out of my sails
and my ship was dead in the water,
she was the island in the distance
that rekindled my resolve to go on.
 
When I somehow lost my way,
she was the North Star
that faithfully shone in my dark nights
so I could find my way again.
 
How shall I thank the silent lighthouse
 that helps keep my journeys out of harm’s way;
the constant harbor I can always find shelter in
when life’s seas become too rough
even for the toughest of hearts?
 
A million words of thanks will not suffice.
A million tunes of gratitude will amount to nothing. 
For how can any sailor count
the number of stars that shine in the midnight sky?
And how can seashells ever succeed
in drawing all the waters of the infinite sea?
 

SAILING HOME
 
Arise, my soul, arise! 
You and I are going home.
We have been away too long
From our Father’s presence,
In search of things we thought
He could not give.
 
We have sailed to the farthest
Corners of the world, looking for
Our imagined Edens.
 
We have searched far and wide,
We have looked high and low,
Yet we have not found – till now –
The paradise we seek.
 
We did stumble into some
Treasures along the way,
And for a time we thought
Our search was at last over!
But all their brilliance faded
long before we could load
The jewels onto our ship.
 
You and I have grown so old
And tired in the course of these
Fruitless journeys.  I barely
Have in my heart
The flicker of a desire
To move on further.
 
Arise, my soul, arise!
We don’t have much time to waste.
Let us steer this dying ship
Back to that distant harbor,
Where our Father earnestly waits
For our journey back home.
 

 THOUGHTS BEFORE A
CLOCK-SHOP WINDOW
 
 
And when these clocks -- nay,
All the clocks in the world --  suddenly
Stop for you; and the wheel of time
Refuses to turn any further;
And Death knocks on your door
To tell you that it’s all over…
Will you be ready to leave
It all behind, with the calmness
Of a working man who knows
He has given his best
To the passing day’s tasks?
Will your heart beat
A little faster, in joyful
Anticipation of the journey
Ahead and the new world
That waits yonder?
 
Listen, my soul, and listen well…
This noisy ball and its
Countless cymbals have made
You lose track of the silent ticking
Of clocks like these…
 
Yet, their arms will not turn forever.
And the sand in the hourglass
Will pour hurriedly down --
Unperturbed by how
And what for
Your life is being lived.

THE WINDSHIELD CLEANER ON VIA BATTISTINI

 
Everyday I see him there at the intersection,
wishing and waiting for the traffic light to turn red
so that -- for a few coins -- he can offer to clean
 the windshields of those who either have  no time
 to do it themselves or believe their minutes are
too precious to be wasted on such a menial task.
 
He rarely absents himself from his post.
  Neither the cold of winter nor the cruel heat
of Roman summer is sufficient reason
 enough for him to skip a day.
 
Often, as I watch him walk from one windshield
 to the next, I wonder what made him leave his
native land and settle down in a country
 which is not his own and which
neither considers him its own. 
 
Was it war and its horrors that drove him
 away?  Was it poverty and
its countless humiliations?
 
Back in my own country, this man has
 a myriad of siblings – different from him in
terms of the color  of his skin and the
language he speaks,  but indistinguishable from
him in all other respects, in the depth
and scope of his hunger most of all. 
 
On many other walls of our world,
the same sad portrait hangs:
  men, women and children
wiping the windshields of the more fortunate,
 and wishing in their hearts that someday
the windshield of humanity’s mind may
finally be cleansed of the mud that blinds it
 to the shame of living comfortably
in the midst of the poor.