On The Old High School Grounds Poem by Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot

Some memories of this old place are glued to my mind
As if a gecko comfortably adhering to a polished fence
Affirmed by the landmarks, the big or small things I find
Like the mosses on the posts dominating the front stage
Or the flight of steps leading to the country churchyard
I have always carried my warm thoughts of childhood
Spent on these grounds, in these rooms, with teachers
And classmates, like a family heirloom in a large pouch
Memories dimmed by time and space now return in a flash
Speeches, sermons, declarations, even shared silences
Recaptured, an artificial fountain cascading to its source
I just know I stood on this very spot, as if it was yesterday

Forgotten feelings of happiness, even of sadness resurface
Like a torrent of rain in summer, unexpected yet welcome
Familiar as the mutiny of graphic colors in the western sky
Just before sunset, even years after the last one you saw
Half remembered episodes no longer ache for completion
The blanks are filled in by an old classmate’s face or shape
Or laughter or comment that belonged, first, to another time
I have reclaimed what I lost when I departed from this place
One part of myself perpetually homesick is home at last
Still, there are silhouettes that will remain silhouettes
Such as voices from the grave we know not whose and where
Sad tears burn our yearning for affairs forever misplaced

Like spilt milk, nothing remains, not even their memory
Forever suppliant for remembrance, forever a mystery
Some events this transmogrified place professes no more
The wooden armchairs with Andres’ name have vanished
Like the brilliance of the constellations on a cloudy night
I see not the wooden room where A professed a fawn’s love for B
Or the tall poinsettia, near where, perhaps, devious young men
Coaxed naïve girls for a first kiss, under the shroud of darkness
Ants crawling over their feet, mosquitoes humming overhead
Or an old literature book with my name scrawled in my hand
On the page immortalizing Markham’s “The Man With A Hoe”
Or the room from which boomed dear old John’s singing voice

Or the kitchen where I cooked my first and last rhubarb jelly
There my vision of me as chef began and ended like a bubble
Landmarks are gone or different, their ghosts hauntingly vivid
Like calcified stomps of trees smitten by age as old as time
How classmates now look slowly supersede our clear recall
Of their young faces; there are novel features of interest-
Paints of red on lips and cheeks the Besao wind used to crack
The double chins, crow’s feet, fine lines marking the forehead,
The bulges, as though humps of soft earth on a road once flat
Strands of grey hair elegantly highlighting stress or wisdom
Like freckles of stubborn dust on antique, augmenting its worth
Our teachers look younger; how they used to look so much older

The trees, the buildings, the ground- this place has shrank-
A small corner of the wide world we, as small specks, live in
The wide world our education in these premises spoke for
Yet the size of a place is not the magnitude of its significance
We have gone to places whose plain sense of things we forgot
We may have moved out of this place; it never moved out of us
There are new things in this old place, old things in this new
Most dear teachers retired or traveled to the Great Beyond
But their spirits, erasing their absence, pervade the rooms
As if the lingering whiff of perfume of someone who just left
The new ones have taken their places in the old classrooms,
Captivating the esteem of the young people we once were

There is a new building, a new facade, a new tree, a new leaf
Set against the old rustic ambience with the city’s amenities
This place looks oh, so achingly familiar, yet wistfully foreign
Young people crossing my path seem to pause to stare at me
With the intimidating mien of locals appraising a stranger
I have that foreboding sense that one day in two decades
They will come back as I have, stand on this same old ground
And brood as I do with a mixed sense of elation and nostalgia
A sense that will morph drearily into deep, dark melancholy
During the long ride away from the home of their childhood.