An Odd Feeling Poem by RIC BASTASA

in that place
if you remember
mango trees line up
the street
that year
blooming

i go back there
chancing to meet an old
friend of ours
in a cafe

she asks me
how come things did not
work out
the way they should have
been

we fit in her picture
she says we have wasted the chances
and time must
have betrayed us

i say
things happen sometimes
and we
do not have control

our fates have hands of
their own
shaping
their own
sculptures

love is illusive
like a mirage in the desert
at the end
there is only sand and sun


the boat going to Dipolog
has docked
and an hour from now it shall
sail again
for Cebu

we parted
with a smile in our hearts
reckoning
how she had served as
our bridge

i lied to myself when i said
i do not love you anymore

and she believed that

i walk back to the boat
and it rains suddenly
and i get wet feeling like
a chick without feathers
and left alone
by its mother hen