In The Context Of My Own Time Poem by RIC BASTASA

when we were children
we climb pomelo trees
gather those ripe fruits
and enjoy the company of
neighbors and friends
eating together under the
trees on the side of
the village road leading
to the far city.

we played those chasing
games after, then we go to
the river to bathe our
brown bodies and ride those
carabaos, and slide on those
hills and sing the village
songs.

we had many neighbors then,
their houses just across the
road where our old house stood.
and then we all went to
the universities leaving our
parents at home with their
farms and servants and dogs.


we finished our courses, some
had become doctors and lawyers
and engineers, and got married
and live their own lives and
raise their own families and
we only see each other again
during class reunions or during
the fiesta of our town.

and then the landscape changed.
roads got expanded, houses got
demolished, projects of government
expanded, bridges are build and
malls and commercial buildings
rose like mushrooms in our place.

parents died and buried in those
memorial gardens, and then we
get lost from each other busy with
our own lives. The village turned
into a city and no one knows each
other anymore as things and events
and people move and change and
then simply become memories.

and so i write all these in
melancholy, in the sadness of
the past, and in the anxieties
of the future. Within the context
of my life, my time, and my
own grief and sorrow.