The Travelling Notebook

Around the time Noynoy Aquino was sworn in as the new Philippine President, a couple of Baguio friends talked about organizing another visual arts and poetry project timed to celebrate our city's 101st charter day. We decided on an open-media exhibit at the Cafe by the Ruins (now that the cafe is under renovation, we hope the exhibit "Explorations" remains when it reopens for the selfish reason that I haven't seen it yet).

Martin Masadao thought of a travelling notebook of handwritten poetry passed from one Baguio poet to another. The plan was to have a slide show of some sort, with projector and all on opening eve so that the poets' calligraphy would be visible to guests instead of passing the notebook from one person to the next. According to Martin, there was some technical snafu so our brave friends ended up reading our poems. The notebook, whose leaves were just a bunch of modest manila paper Martin lovingly bound together with a picture of a Moorish-looking character and setting on the front and back covers, did get passed around and stayed beyond due date with me (over two weeks) while I struggled with the usual mental block. The prospect of sitting down and allowing melancholia to take over me is not attractive, but when Baboo Mondonedo texted that someone was waiting for her turn to write, my adrenaline shot up (always a deadline beater).

Here's one of my three poems that form part of the "collection" whose whereabout is unknown:



Drawing Lesson



this boxed landscape is presented

to you on an eigth of a page of

your yasaka sketchpad.

today marks your sixth lesson.

the instruction: enlarge the landscape

on the rest of the page.



your grip on the chunk of oil pastel

is unsure.

you stare at a representation of the sun,

feel its rays, violent in yellow orange,

singe your lashes,

you hear the rattle of bones beneath

the grass, you watch a spectral

mist coil like a cobra around

the trunks of hapless trees.



in the heaving distance, blackbirds caw

a dirge of warning: stop

romancing the mountain,

reduce the drippy sentiment that

has chained you to summers past

of cousinly camaraderie.



those companions true have scattered

far. what's left is this rectangle.

inside: sunny orb, horizon of hills, grass

fading like your infrequent dreams of mountains.

watercolor shows part of my lola's home in Baguio