From Down Under, This Lady

For Manang Fele Mann, for a gift of encounter on Dec 28, 2009

She comes from the sun,
this lady from down under
a proverb unto her own:
what is she who comes
with a smile even when
the angels are mad, raging
and restless in their flight?

She has gone away
only to return to where
she comes from
the warm soil, moist and dry,
that knew her veined hands
clasped in fervent prayer
her chanting cusped for the asking
for some salving to come
to assuage the bruised body
the bruised soul, bruised mind
and this story of return
offering a loving lullaby.

She keeps her appointment
with time and all those moments
that tell you of sins revisiting
the sinner only to talk about
that which gives some sweet
sweet balm.

We let go of the accounting
of lies, she tells, her voice firm,
that of an angel seeking light.
The deception is complete
and it cannot be undone.

We move on, she says,
to painting pictures with the colors
of that which will remind us
of the mercies we accord
to the lesser kind
some pretenders to some greatness
we cannot figure out how.

With her by my side,
I think of red here, like
the rebel word of a clown
or the clandestine cadre
of a poem about a metaphor
for a final freedom.

She says she is delighted,
so delighted we have met
for the first time after
miles and miles of letters
bridging what distance
separated us from her Darwin sun.

I tell her the same thing:
I send you my bright stars
my singing blue moons,
their alignment the meaning
of what I have become
in the Honolulu of my lifetime.

Stronger as you can see,
even if at times, some of the time,
the scars open up to countries
I have gone to journey
one meaning of what is beyond.

A Solver Agcaoili
Pasig, Dec 28/2009