How Cold Was It? Poem by RIC BASTASA

i'm here breathing,
writing, chatting, reading a case,
pausing for a while, looking at the yellow green blinds

profuse light from the window, murmuring air conditioner,
books piling, folders rising,
papers to sign,

switching to music, turning it off, listening to a tv opera
next to my cubicle,
someone is concentrating on a ball game,

sounds of a car arriving, a door opens, she is singing,
someone is taking a chair pulling it like a pail,
another laughing woman,

i imagine if the trees are greener with leaves now
after the storm
or if the pathway towards Tabon is still muddy
what must have happened to father's white horse taken
cared of by ronnie?

i promise myself, i will visit the mountain soon
sleep on the nipa hut there and watch the fog the following
morning
thick on the top of the forest trees

how cold was it? i want to remember.