Always in our dusty weather he looms wistful
In a winter overcoat. His granite gaze seems
To gauge the cold congealed in our dusk-
Dappled rooms. Perhaps he alone hears
The cellar's riot of rats, the termites and
Their mighty silence, or even the lizard's earth-
Kiss. The bell's tongue at twilight seems
To tell us nothing but a grumble in our ears.
Only the breathless lilt in the broadcaster's
Voice lulls us while the television's light
Dims grandmother's eyes. She seems to hear
The gnawing whir of gnats the way she winces
At the hush of us mumbling grace at dinner.
We almost choke when she says the hook holding
The frame of the Last Supper is rust-eaten.
It's enough for us to yearn for water--- the rasp
Unscraped in her throat. There, she gasps,
Smiling as her infirm fingers trace the petals
Withering in pastel on the wallpaper stained
With rain. There, there my lover! It's then
I know she's really pointing outside, at the man
Molded in rock upon whose stolid solitude
In the park her soot-mottled memory clings
Like roots, fickle as wings flickering, flaking off
On his head: a monument's halo of moths.

- 1st Prize Winner, The 1997 Home Life Poetry Prize
    Home Life Magazine, June 1997
    
                                       - Philippine Graphic
     18 August 1997