Moon outside our window

No sky could hold
so much light–
and here comes the brimming,
the flooding and streaming
out of the clouds
and into the leaves...
~ from "Harvest Moon" by Mary Oliver

No sight makes me more excited to be alive and awake than the moon glowing bright at past 4 a.m. on another morning when I am wakened by the urge to pee. Facebook is flooded with images of this dazzling orb, red in some parts of the world, a luminous white in mine.

Up to 6 a.m. this Wednesday, the full moon was still setting, framed by the branches of pine trees outside our bedroom window. My grandchild Kai did a moon dance while I got ready to dress her up for school.

Would I had a child's courage and strength to hop and skip and do a dance as a gesture of thankfulness for the free gifts of Nature.

But I am only a half-mute witness to this godly hour, and the camera phone I borrowed from my husband Rolly Fernandez, who mumbled from the depths of his slumber that yes, I could borrow his gadget, cannot adequately capture this glory be moment.

Enough said, now back to workaday deadlines!

Scar, Courage & Muddled Puddle

“When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”
― Mary Oliver

because i like to take the shortest point
to get elsewhere i have acquired this habit,
maybe a declasse one that annoys others,
of leaving peeled eggshells in a bowl
which i have also used to serve hard-boiled eggs in

the gesture triggers another round
of name-calling

what a pig, she hissed

because this is how i permit
my months to go by when
the spirit has weakened to put
up a semblance of a fight,
i have nonetheless trained myself
to eat sarcasm & the disapproval
of others for sunday breakfast
& wishing the viand & the rice,
wishing these small graces were
bullets & threats of death instead

because i am seen as the slob, the blob,
the messiest one, the unstable one,
the older one who had long abdicated her
role & duty to be the responsible one,
the one who has heard doors banged at her face,
the one who goes through
a revolving door of employment
till there is no recourse
but to begin where she started

i am continuously
being weighed & judged
no matter the bodily heft i have amassed
to keep me visible to their world
no matter what few riches
i have struggled to gain
& hold them up, here, take them all,
still the marks of the scale say
my worth is low in their
hierarchy of accomplishments & net worth

& it is fine for them
to underline this

because i am this
& i cannot be that
it seems fine again
for them to turn & twist
the dagger of insults
frontally this time

three day ago,
i was harmlessly seated
thinking of some unfinished works
& what line should go here,
what color should go there,
when out of nowhere another said
pity you, though you share
the same zodiac sign
as this blessed niece
you have no skill
like hers to run a house
superbly efficiently
the way she does

& this same other adds
the new malignment
in a growing collection
of snide remarks
with no awareness
that comparisons have
meanings & meanness in them.

this mistress of put-downs
flutters her fingers
in an imperious
gesture of dismissal
& worse, wears the look
of innocence for
having done no harm.

it would be more merciful
if she & the others
totally disown me
claim no blood ties with me
forget i ever passed their lives
than my stoically trying
to bear cut after upper cut

because it is me who also wants
myself effaced from their presence
for this muddled puddle
i call a life to clear up
like a dredged canal

i will will will
in a day not far away
leave no trace
turn white like the bits of eggshell
thrown in the trash
be that insignificant leaf that falls
& no one hears about.

--Babeth Lolarga

Morning Poem by Mary Oliver

Maybe if you look hard enough through your sputtering laptop's files, you'll find the manuscript that wasn't in your priority search list. This is what happened early this morning. Mary Oliver came calling again before I could throw water on my face and brew coffee. What's an old girl to do but post this poem? It's a worthy companion, much loved and read over and over for comfort, and it'll be just here for ready reference when things get rocky or off kilter in the new week.

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.



Photo from the Facebook community "Blissful Quotes

'You do not have to be good'

This was how I spent the first of May, doing an act of avoidance, of postponing prioritized deadlines for the challenge of translating a poem by Mary Oliver again. Today, I knocked off one deadline. Tomorrow, I'll do a Scarlett O'Hara. Thank you, Padma Perez, for posting the Oliver poem in your blog.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

--Mary Oliver

Mga Gansang Ligaw

Di mo kailangan maging mabait.
Di mo kailangan lumakad nang paluhod
Ng isang daang milya sa disyerto, humihingi ng tawad
Kailangan mo lang na payagan ang malambot na hayop ng iyong katawan na mahalin ang gusto niyang mahalin
Sabihin mo sa akin ang iyong kawalan ng pag-asa, at sasabihin ko sa iyo ang akin
Samantala patuloy ang mundo.
Samantala ang araw at ang mga malinaw na bato ng ulan
ay gumagalaw sa kalawakan
sa mga kapatagan at kalaliman ng mga puno
Sa mga bundok at ilog.
Samantala, ang mga gansang ligaw, sa kaitaasan ng malinis na bughaw na hangin
ay pauwi na muli.
Kung sino ka man, gaano ka man kalungkot,
inaalay ng mundo ang kanyang sarili sa iyong imahinasyon
tinatawag ka tulad ng mga gansang ligaw, marahas at nakakagulat—
paulit-ulit na inaanunsyo ang iyong lugar
sa pamilya ng mga bagay-bagay.

--tinangkang isalin sa Pilipino ni Babeth Lolarga

One Precious Life

Maybe the title should be "some precious sheaves of paper." The short piece below I saved from mounds of paper and assorted files my packrat partner and I hoarded over the years.

Before the New Year dawned, we reclaimed some space, brightened a spare room by getting rid of cartons of paper. I applied a simple criterion for what should be kept: those of heart value stay, those of head (work-related) must go.

This poem, sent by a friend last Easter, stays in the saved files. Alongside the English text written by Mary Oliver is my handwritten translation into Filipino. In the translation venture, Merci Javier Dulawan of the Baguio Writers Group helped me, and I read this at the closing program of the second Cordillera Creative Writers Workshop in Sagada last year.

This is my way of greeting one and all a very good year, one where every bit of life is valued.

THE SENSORY WORLD

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
Into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
How to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
Which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

MAPANDAMDAMING MUNDO

Hindi ko tiyak kung ano ang panalangin
Alam ko kung paano magpatihulog
Sa damo, paano lumuhod sa damo,
Paano tumunganga at mabiyayaan, paano maglakad-lakad sa kabukiran,
Na siyang ginagawa ko buong araw.
Sabihin mo sa akin, ano pa ang dapat kong ginawa?
Hindi ba't lahat ay namamatay, at biglaan?
Sabihin mo sa akin, ano ang balak mong gawin
Sa iyong iisang mapangahas at mahalagang buhay?

Photo by KIMI FERNANDEZ