I am a man, grandfather to four.
Adherent to the same religion,
Poetry.

Breathing through mine eyes,
Exhaling carbon words,
That with time and pressure become
Poems, verbal musical notes upon life.

Each motion, from tiny to grand,
A capsule of expression,
That if examined under microscope,
Familial DNA, interconnected tissue,
Discovered, tho logic says,  
Time and distance render impossible.

But this is a diamond
This is a writ to be slipped
Upon the finger, the heart, the essence,
Of the only Banyan tree I have hugged.

This poem but a fig,
In the cracks of kindness,
The crevices of caring,
It has slow germinated.

You dear, Sally,
My host,
A building upon I can lean,
When wearied spirits uproot
My surficial composure.

Your seeds carried from east to west,
By a fig wasp, a bird unknown,
An ocean voyager, of indisputable vision, strength.

This seeded messenger, word carrier,
Supplanted in me, and your pupils,
Jose-Bolima-Remillan
Xavier-Paolo-Joshh-Mandrez
Whose very names breathe poems,
in others too, like me and Atu,
Seeds to become new roots, but you,
Our Host official and forever
Planter of trees of loving kindness.

You already know with love and affection,
I call you Grandma Sally,
And when you ask, beseech,
I cannot refuse.

Together we will will banish the sad,
Acknowledge we, that life's ocean,
A mixture of many, even sad, a necessity.

But I promise that will turn it into
Something simple, something good.
For you have asked and I answer you
Right here right now - your wish,
My objective, deep rooted like you,
Like an old banyan tree,
Your roots spread far, spread wide.

So some eve, when to the beach, to the sky
You glance, smile, no matter what, troubles dispersed,
For the reflection of you, seeds, full fledged trees now,
Bending skywards, in search of your rays of expression,
Your maternal wisdom rooted, spread so wide, globally,
All over this Earth, is visible from your
Beloved Philippines.


---------------------------------------
In her own words..

I am a widow,
with five remarkable granddaughters....
all beautiful, intelligent girls.
It is such a waste not to write....
each morning that unfolds is filled
with things to write about....
the people, the birds,
the trees, the wind,
the seas,
everything we set our eyes on,
they are all
poetry in motion.
Life itself is poetry,
I always have pen and paper within reach.
My past experiences are a
never-ending source
of ideas and words for my poems....
I shall write until time permits me,
"til there's breath within me."
-------------------------------------------------
A banyan (also banian) is a fig that starts its life as an epiphyte (a plant growing on another plant) when its seeds germinate in the cracks and crevices on a host tree (or on structures like buildings and bridges). "Banyan" often refers specifically to the Indian banyan or Ficus benghalensis, the national tree of India,[1] though the term has been generalized to include all figs that share a characteristic life cycle...
Like other fig species (which includes the common edible fig Ficus carica), banyans have unique fruit structures and are dependent on fig wasps for reproduction. The seeds of banyans are dispersed by fruit-eating birds. The seeds germinate and send down roots towards the ground.

The leaves of the banyan tree are large, leathery, glossy green and elliptical in shape. Like most fig-trees, the leaf bud is covered by two large scales. As the leaf develops the scales fall. Young leaves have an attractive reddish tinge.[6]

Older banyan trees are characterized by their aerial prop roots that grow into thick woody trunks which, with age, can become indistinguishable from the main trunk. The original support tree can sometimes die, so that the banyan becomes a "columnar tree" with a hollow central core. Old trees can spread out laterally using these prop roots to cover a wide area.

White Tissues

a thousand years ago
I had to do the shopping,
(short story, irrelevant)

angry, she,
always angry,
the ex called me careless+...
never quite remembered to buy
the no~color tissues,
white only, on the list ordered,
to avoid decorative mismatch clash
to not offend the bathroom guests's
sensibilities and refined fleshy color palettes,
and not to match thereby,
to unduly reveal
the mismatch of
two lives incompatible

she ****** the color from my life...

still now,
buy only
whitely, precisely,
always,
for the colors
in my life, of my life,
have now been returned to me

but they are best cherished,
visible inside, looking out,
painted filter to enhance,
to reveal!
the joys inherent
in the colors of a
refunded, redounding rebounding,
re-fined happiness internal

tissues white now employed
to store the joy colored in colorful tears,
re-defying re-de-finding-fining
the contrast
from the sorry past,
tears now in living color
shed while writing
this happy colored vignette

~~

Poems of Color

just too much
colorless cold,
to decamp to,
sit upon the Adirondack throne
that is by his name,
by the cold waters,
now winter coated with
white-capped amber bluewaves
arriving jack-frosted on the lifeless beach

over this weathered sanctum,
natures supremacy reigns,
no matter the season or
his faulty human body's
weak reasoning,
it rules,
despite your frail poetic absence

but without your imposition
upon companion grey,
ensconced patiently
in that rarified atmosphere,
where and when
the sea sword
knights and inspires
the benign, benighted poet,

the human in him
frets and worries

where and when
ever again,
will nature deign to rain
poems upon him and his
winter-storaged writing organs?

the poet,
through his own
winnowy window reflection,
sees the sight of
the empty chair
between him and the sea air and
pondering more,
how shall he ever write
in the upcoming months of bleak?

through the frost-edged glass,
that old chair,
now sudden animated,
sensing his poetic human presence,
it turns toward its missing occupant,
voice aged reassuring,
speaking,
rhyming, 
it chants,
somber intoning...

"the poems writ yet still  undiscovered
but inscribed upon
my weathered slats and armrests,
have your name and no other,
therefore, there fired,
perforce,
they await your return,
come spring...come summer

now is the season of your hibernation,
we sense your fearful
winter forebodings and
speculations of consternation

know these unopened poems
are in fluid stored,
when you return
to our joint station,
we jointly will celebrate their
first day of naissance

you are charged,
you sole possess the
eye colored liquid visions
to see them
in the splinters and the breezes
through to their natural
childbirth revelation"

~~~

The Colors of Life Everlasting*

blondes, brunettes, redheads,
the goodbye colors of the
street's tree choir members
and their leafy gowned denizens,

the good stiff chill upon them,
the selfsame chill,
in my anguished mind,
now hiding

those partial unclothed trees,
to me sing,
a comfort food song
heard above the quiet terror of the
noises of a winter's wind precursors

"we green,
will be again
tho old,
spring green
is signature of our almost
life everlasting

once you wee were,
free green uncaring, youthful,
presumptuous presuming
that you too were,
in possession of
life everlasting

your colors
have changed too,
the process,
your process, different,
unlike our scheduled
rebirthing maintenance

yours a continuum slide,
with no reversal allowed,
no returning
you
to your first days of
crayon drawing youth,
unlike us,
a calculus of impossibility

we will turn young again
for many seasons more,
you,
never will

new eyes will feast upon our
glories refreshed
and love our
green visor shade cast

yet special are you,
the man-poet
who was chosen
by forces controlling,
to see and to tell,
witness-write of our annualization
during our overlapping
frames in time

when to the shade of hades
your physic sent,
our limbs, our leaves, our lives,
as-long-as-they-too-shall-last,
will cover thy remains and
give your poems back to the
sultry summer breeze from
whence they came,
and the colors
of your words
will be then
the colors
of your life everlasting"