To My New Neighbors Poem by RIC BASTASA

on this morning chat
she says she will be arriving on time
for the halloween

she will be lighting candles for her dead parents
and other relatives of this old town
offer them flowers and prayers that she can muster

she will be bringing her middle child
who starts to write his poems in his notebook

she tells me he is the silent type
the one who can thrive without a conversation

she shifts the topic about the color of the rails of her new house
the verandah is not pink now, it is painted white

and she is asking what flowers fit into the picture
i suggest the bougainvillas, the flowering ones already
sold in the nearby farm by an old lady

she is excited, she will be having us, as neighbors finally
our fence shall be a line of daisies

our yard evergreen, our trees shall be the ones with
perfume: the champacas and the ylang-ylangs

and expectedly, there will be a lot of laughter and
nice conversations of cultured and educated people
whose sense of morality would be high

the chat is quite long, and i decided i have to end it.

i have still other poems inside my mind.Unwritten.
What bothers me, and for which i am really interested

is the poetry of his middle child. I like someone who writes
like me. And i do not need a lot of conversations too.

i like my silence. I love the talk inside my silence.
I will burst.