Remembering Father Poem by Benjamin Chiu Uy

The special night that came to me in Carcar

Took me back to these candid shots of images, memories,

The tropical evenings, as it was a solitary boy with wide eyes and deep thoughts,

In the paragon of retained memories to remember those that I loved that comprises my birth.

Here father makes chicken stew in a small pan with shredded
cabbages and stored packages of preserved noodles from a kitchen cabinet.

Mother lying on a bamboo bed before an improvised table for the occasion.

Inside a cramped one bedroom apartment serving as a living room and an entire family unit.

A small lit portable kerosene stove gushing out a yellowish orange flames reflected on the walls of the dimly lighted room.

She is observing my father in a kind of muted wonderment, waiting for the chicken stew tbits to bedone with.

Then she rose from bed and seated languidly.
And the late midnight supper commenced.

It was the idled moments before bedtime that me, father with mother rekindled a unity bonding in this late midnight meal.

Memories, bringing the long surreal ruminations and recollections.

And i am a boy once again with my family at my side.

This and then, these ecstacies conferred my faith,

My family and the families of others, that rekindles
the memories of my childhood.

Remarkable family love and pride kept its record of myself and its origins.

To my father who was alive forty years ago.

Done to the passage of time,
Curtains to a feeble embrace to the forever shinning flames of long ago.







And