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

Encounters at Cabalen

For Manang Fele Mann & Manang Francisca Javier

It is plural, this meeting
of minds, plural too
in their capacity for words
that bring in the healing
from the wounds, raw and unkind,
pestering and festering,
this continual discourtesies
of lies and what they can do
in their conjugal power
to destroy what love is
even if it abounds, well beyond
what a poem is, a boon
if it is love, beyond the dictator's touch,
to give as a gift to us.

She came with her bright light
and all you see are the many loves
of her vagabond heart,
she who has come all the way
from this nearness so far
we cannot touch her word
nor follow her laughter
to its counterpoint to reside
in the sacred places of our lives.

It is forgiveness she tells,
full and absolute
and she reminds you of her stories
their triumph beyond their conclusions
as she was with her sister
all through and through
in the blazing of roads and more
for us to go by in life
as in the way we dream of our homeland
our people in need of soul
spirit too in the way we say our word
like the trials we go through
in writing the first lines of our songs
when we come back again
once more in the company
of what was, this sacred past
we cannot go back to
not any longer, resisting
and resisting this forgetting
that has come to assault us,
we who have come
to make a pact with the word
that sings and sings for us.

I must thank you now:
two sisters like one, your joy
the conversion of sorrow
I have come to know.

And with you I laugh, laughing
louder than I should
in the company of strangers
with their buffet of stares
and approving eyes.

We partake of the food:
our recollections of events
that will heal us more and more.


A Solver Agcaoili
SM Megamall's Cabalen/Pasig
Dec 28, 2009