Thailand (siam for us lovers)

King Bhumipol die

Love is love

Goodbye

Thai

Box

Shared visions and promises
Written on yellow papers
Invisibly marked....faded, broken promises
Endearing terms...endearing moments,
Old postcards...old photos and letters
Time-colored...marked souvenirs,
I kept them inside....all stored in a case....
Unexpectedly, the Heavens cried in anger, one day
I rushed, to hold tiny currents at bay...to save
The memories...but the box was no longer there
Those gifts, letters, souvenirs were nowhere
Almost a lifetime...stored in there
But...monsoon rains took them all away...forever
::::::::::::::::::::::::
Got to find myself, a new box....


Sally

Copyright October 15, 2016
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan

My mother was a writer.
I remember her,
papers spread out upon a bed sheet in the sand,
stacked pebbles protecting her work from the wind
as I made drip-castles at the water's edge
and braided crowns from wild poppies.
I would run to her so she could
rub grape sunscreen into my sandy shoulders
and I asked her once,
“Mama,
is that poetry?”
and she said “No little one,
you are poetry,
this only tries to be.”
and I thanked her,
and ran back to the water
to search for flat stones to skip,
and thought no more of poetry.

Father Mckenzie  

Turk’s Head teased my shadow
free last evening along the arroyo

our separation minute yet
edging toward the clement lip

accruing like the thunder eggs
I keep in a jar by the door

God long since departed, drifted
away on the high desert wind

that drew us here long ago
rifled pages of the Book Of Common Prayer.

A sodden breeze from home last night
a tang of salt, a churchyard hush

low plaint of cello’s lurking around
these adobe walls for a way inside

my callow words returned to claim
their hollow sound and mouth

all that was left unsaid
an old man darning socks

in the night when nobody’s there
crossing the room to leave

the door ajar to old sermons
bible black sky pierced with diamonds.

A most pious man
whose well-tempered music
brushed the cobwebs
from the throne of God

Evolution was made manifest
across deep time
these lyrical figures
achieve the same purpose
in the space between the morning star
and the dawn

A fallow field
is sewn with pearls
a moonlit beach
illuminated by shadow
every scrape of the fiddler's bow
merges mind with the present
harvests the meaning
in the moment

The composer
that good man
was
for a time
church organist at St. John's
its notable steeple leaning
all askew
as a rebuke against God
or perhaps the drunken architect

A finger of candlelight
plays across the manuscript
a fugue echoes
through the still church

And though no living person
on that still winter's night
shares the organist's solemn delight
the stirring mass of possibility
that is posterity
awaits

you will go your way
despite my protests
no use lamenting
what was never promised
the sun rides low the horizon
soon it will not clear the treetops
storms gather in the northern sea
needled wind to scattered seed
hoary frost on yellowed grass
dark leaves in mirrored puddles
a suspended death
crystalline and indeterminate
there is no fire hot enough
to stave off the first chill
of a careless winter
the numb hibernating sleep
soft gray melting days
the desperate wish
to regain summer