Homing

Grace Monte de Ramos

For Joray at 68

In your notebook
You sketched your dream
House: circular, planted in a grove of trees –
Not mahogany which kills birds, but hardwood like tugas,
Shady like acacia, generous like kamunggay, with its fronds
Reaching into the kitchen for easy plucking. Wide windows will
Usher the call of the kingfisher into your mornings. The trill of a
Nearby brook will sing you to sleep. Will you write your memoir
While conversing with the roots that nourish art and love?
Surely you will tell of Nanay Tinay and her deft fingers!
Poems will sprout from your own hand, like magical
Letters from home. Do send me one.

-Grace R. Monte de Ramos
September 21, 2021

Grace R. Monte de Ramos has learned many things in the course of her 44-year-old friendship with Marj Evasco, one of them being that mahogany trees silence birds.