the jocund days of my youth beckons me gloriously
like the crimson sunset of cawa cawa boulevard,
bordered by the twin islands of the corralled sta. cruz
where the soiled ghosts from the tribal burial grounds
rise up like steam from the boiling narrow straits
and merge with twilight’s plethora of colors.
the sound of friendly ‘bagay’ yells to the sea gypsies
in their colorful tapis and sailboats in the waning light of day
still resound in dying echoes in my fetching reveries.
before the sun rises, the fishermen pile their catch
in the counters of the teeming marketplace.
the crabs, lobsters, bangus and matambakas
trickle their excess seawater to the earthen floor
and muddy the thick strong feet of the sellers,
leathery like the skin of the wild boar still furtively
snorting inside rattan cages alongside hens and roosters,
saintly flat, crushing the head of eels with their heels
while the eel’s tails are intertwined in the ankles.
in the rice fields of canelar, the reapers are swinging
their scythes in joyous songs of life’s golden harvest.
the pounding of the rice stalks against the petrified log
lay the husks with grains of life on the gathering nipa mats
while the rhythmic sounds of the pestle pounding on the mortar
are like mournful drum sounds of a funeral procession.
and in the backyard of schools, the learners are tilling
with army spades and hoes garden plots like cemetery graves,
watering with tin sprinklers lush and bountiful pechay leaves
and patiently weeding out the suffocating burdens of growth.
the tiny mayas, the nodding culculs, and the lofty kingfisher
are calling me with teasing birdcalls from the guava trees.
its branches are bent and wobbling from their numbers,
leaves and birds are fused as one against the fluttering shadows
of coconut trees and the low arms of the ipil ipil dense shrub.
my slingshot of the guava Y, of rubber inner tubes
and from leather of my old moccasin lay broken
amongst the picked bullet pebbles in my dense hideout.
the sky suddenly darkens from their flight of escape
from the loud shoo of my young frustration.
the long lazy summer vacation days linger in my memory
of water, water, cooling blue green life giving water
in the natural pools and cascading falls of pasonanca,
in the rolling, tumbling, playful waves of caragasan beach.
my mind is a clear blue bubbling aquarium
from the breathless dives with homemade goggles
into the living reefs and corals rife with minute organisms
playing hide and seek and tantalizing peek-a-boos,
sucking the envenomed breath out of my bursting lungs,
and the mischievous and boisterous laughter
of skirting around in sopping shorts with pails of water
dousing my rivals with the game of tubigan
under the swelter of the noon day sun,
fire hydrants with open flowing waters flooding
the bemired canals bringing out the frogs and catfish
wiggling in the scorching pavements of caretela roads.
in summer the bougainvilleas bloom in myriad colors
in the heavy hedges of simple barrio homes
where fiestas welcome strangers and friends alike.
the carabao mango tree is pregnant with yellow fruit
almost touching the ground for a grateful kiss,
hesitant to be plucked for the slurping of the ravenous.
roadside stalls are like hanging decorations
of the prickly durian, the ebony mangosteen,
the star apple dripping with sap, the lanzones,
the sweet atis, the sour santol, and the hairy rambutan.
fertile sustaining fruits of my land, long life giving gifts.
and then there are the black days of semana santa,
covering the naughty snickers with our grimy hands
or face the stern warning of no laughter from our parents,
the endless murmur of the five decades of the mystery beads
on the clammy hands of ancient wrinkled professional prayers
of their mother pearl rosaries wearing their belted gray gowns,
the rasping shuffling of feet as they slide from station to station,
the smell of acrid candle burnings and sculpted mellow wax
at the foot of severe looking saints, arms widely outstretched,
ensnaring all and cleansing the imagined sins of the world,
the snaking religious processions with life like images in floats
of the passion of christ and the scramble of sweaty devotees
to lift the flagellant burden on their bone weary shoulders
in distinct atonement of their annual recalcitrant iniquities.
zamboanga of my lost youth,
where I broke the fragrant scent of the chaste sampaquita
and spread the moist petals on the roadside tingling grass
under the midnight crescent moon, dying, dying
into the deep cavities of the mongrel cluster of blossoms
writhing in the passionate tango dance of death
like the wounded robin with the red stain on its beating breast
from my hunter’s pellet, shuddering with its last breath,
etched forever in the feathers of my winged heart.
zamboanga, zamboanga, city of the virgin people
where east and west and north and south are pointless,
where the juramentados in their bound bodies
and brilliant flashing barongs where a curiosity,
where the lilt of the chavacano dialect is a pidgin
of all the world's culture, where the virgin birth
with three mothers of spain, america and malay
is a miracle that has spawned not a schizophrenic mentality
but a new proud race with the propitious values of each.
in the city of my youth there was no gap in the cultural divide.
in the city of my youth I shall return
and try to recapture the splendor
of the opalescent soul of the chavacano
among the forgiving faces of half a century ago.
elarie29
