Home Poem by Edgar Eslit

The ancestral house seemed smaller, today seen with eye glasses
The pathway seemed shorter, the mangoes grow loftier
It was once open field across the hill
Mushrooming subdivisions had blossomed
The little flower orchard had vanished

But anyhow we felt it would still be remembered
Harrowingly different, but pretty much the same

There was an unfamiliar children’s “bahay-bahayan”
On that path that we arranged
In front of that sagging waiting shed that stands
Beside the curve, where the old Mango tree grew

Surprisingly, forty years folded one summer day
And hurriedly become a springtime of our memory
of many growing trees, of many festivities
a spot where I wept one night after my mother died
and spent longer, in starry-starry nights holding newborn offspring
Yes....it is all there, in that small ancestral home

Facetious, but I'm glad they kept the wooden parrot
It has the same green eyes
That big black statue of St. Roque, along a stony pathway that we laid
still sits behind the curve, where the old mango tree grew