No Llores, Sofia

Estelita on a Singapore street 

 High-rise Singapore buildings

Gilbert bridge across the River Padsan in Laoag

NO LLORES, SOFIA

An unremembered remembering:
The spasm of an imagined
Laughter after love and a bird-call
On a stormy Padsan night
The scimitar moon was emerging
Dripping with yellow liquid fire.

Sorrow lies in a limbo rock.
The door was wide open and the voice
Made no promise to return.


I had wanted to confront
The enigma in your dark eyes
Looking down that road
To the massive church in the east
Where faith ends in cacophony
 At the marketplace.

The space between us now
Is as wide as Death Valley in the desert
As endless as the ocean of peace
As long and eerie as the sun's rays
Sinking in Gabu by the lonely sea
Near the sand mountain.


***

We have to go beyond the mind-thought, away from its noise and clutter and liberate ourselves from hate, anger, greed, the tendency to dominate others, jealousy--this may have been the way the Teacher from Galilee expounded his theory of the eternal message.

STATE OF HEALTH OF SOME OLD ILOKANO WRITERS

     "He is in bad shape," said Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawaii and Manoa.

     Dr. Agca, as he is known by friends and acquaintances, was referring to Terry Gabriel Tugade who has been living in San Francisco, CA for the past 30 years or more.

    In his blog, Dr. Agca made mention of Terry's open heart surgery last year  I talked to Terry (via messenger) and he was telling me of her eyes failing him--what he usually saw, he said, was all white. He did not sound distressed;  he was saying it matter-of-factly.

     I tried unsuccessfully to contact Terry via the FB account of his daughter Ruby.

     On August 28, at 11 in the morning, Terry died in San Francisco, according to Dr. Agca who had been in contact with Ruby, one of two daughters of Terry. Terry left behind his wife Teresita, from Laoag City; twin daughters Ruby and Michelle, sons Edward and Gerald. He will be buried on September 5, at the Holy Cross Cemetery, 1500 Mission Road, Colma, CA.

The following month, sometime in September, Manuel Saguiped Diaz, died in his village in Nagsaag, San Manuel, Pangasinan. This was relayed to us by another writer Prescy Bermudez. Manny was a tri-lingual writer.