rain

you were like rain
to a parched plant
in the desert.

and now
you are gone,
and it will never
be the same.

Apart

we watch the sun set
above the western mountains,
here we are above the cliffs,
and you seem miles away
across the sea surrounding,
sitting beside me
below the yucca tree.

Unconsoled

it is not
when i hear
birds sing
in the evening wind
nor when i feel
your skin
in my arms
that i will
be consoled.

only when
there is
no sea
that divides
and you are
no longer gone,
that i will.

Drain

can you feel
the ebb of this
love we share
taking a toll
on its tides?

it is dark,
and i am cold.

when

when shall we lie
in the grass again
and make love
like strangers?

to K.

you picked
a yellow bell
from our childhood
and brought it to me
decades after...
i still hold it
in my heart.

sunset

you see green fields
driving home on a sunset,
I see a sandy shore
and walking on it.

Patience

Annie gives me lessons
on how to plant the rice paddies
with my bare hands,
my feet soaked in mud
in the high noon of May
and I am pespiring.

I shall wait nine months
she says, to cut
the rice leaves with a sickle,
her hands motioning
on how I should do it;
before I deserve
to lie down
on the dry hay.

one hundred ways

i find
one
hundred
ways
to
let
u
know
i
love
you.

and
you
find
one
hundred
ways
to
drive
deep
into
my
heart
and
cut
me
like
a
knife
with
your
words.

soaring the skies

I am not kidding. This writer is the first woman to co-pilot a Cessna plane and fly over the Philippines' highest peak. You may fly all the way to Bangoy airport in Davao and check aviation logbooks and it will say I signed the flight plans sometime May 1996.

I do not know if any of that will ever make it to history books, and to think I have no license as a pilot or flight navigator. All I had was a week or so of crash course and a month of talking and hanging out with pilots.

Flying planes is no joke. You see, small and big planes alike stay away from mountains else they will crash. The owner of Mindanao Aeroflight Training School, Capt. Priscillo Paz was the first man to fly a Cessna plane over Mount Apo in the 70s. His eldest son, Capt. Giovanni, was with me in the second flight in Philippine aviation history to do so. Third man-pilot to hover over Mount Apo, would be my friend Capt. Belvis. And in those 5 flights, I was in four!

Pilots, whom, I'd rather call flyers, have this inexplicable bond among them. A strange camaraderie. I couldn't quite understand it. And when I was setting off the first of my four flights to hover above Mount Apo, so many things came to my mind. Thoughts of what seemed endless pages of Richard Bach's books I've read came to my head... coming to life before me. It was really an adventure, as he said it would be, and a whole lot of realizations about life and things essential.

The two pilots I flew with, Capt. Giovanni, the son of the owner of Mindanao Aeroflight was the first one I flew with on the first of the four-day adventure. The second pilot, one of the instructors who flew with me for three days was Capt. Belvis. And as if, like changing clothes, as if on cue with take off --- they threw their clothes off the window and bared their souls to me in flight. It was beautiful. I discovered a part of myself that's hidden and only emerges when I am flying with them. Perhaps, I thought to myself, I was also baring my soul to them as well. For the first time, I was in touch with that part of me that only the sky knew.

There is a huge risk for every take off. Knowing this, flyers are ironically 'grounded' when airborne. That when one is faced with a risk to die, one cannot help but think about only the important things in life... things that matter --- happiness, joy, contentment, true love, real friendship, and living life to the fullest... essential things that money could never buy.

Wen it was time for touch down, the flyers and I would share beers talking about life, the joy of flight, geography, love, music, and peace --- they always reminded me of all of what is essential about life and the person who i was in flight. Somehow, I suspect, they had wanted me never to forget that part of myself. No wonder pilots fly very often and that they feel they have to keep flying!

There is an inner joy in flight, I have come to learn. I will never forget how wide the runway expanse seemed to be before take off. Of how the Mount Talomo range looks like from bird's eye view. Or how Mount Apo was standing solitarily and loftily. I will never forget the cold wind breezing in my face and all of me... and of the ice that formed underneathe the plane when we touched down.

To paraphrase the famous writer of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, A Gift of Wings, and One, Richard Bach's words are only of wisdom. There is only one me no matter how many me's i find above ground or on the ground, which reminds me to make most of my day-to-day existence. And that if everything depended on space and time, I would have lost everything.

There is a strange kind of liberty, freedom, nakedness, truthfulness and oneness in flying. I hope I will never forget the person who I was airborne, and I hope I will get at least one chance again to touch that part of me again I have sorely missed, the hidden part of me that only the skies know.