Kashawing (Big Tent: Love's Old Tweet Song)

Kashawing

And so,
this pale son of Scottish kings and
ice-white English princes,
a guest among these island terraces and palms
ringed by Sumatra, West Java, Singapore...
has touched the brown daughter
of Silang and Rizel, of
Filipino sampaguita peddlers and tuba traders.
He, on this side, is the jewelled blue Pacific.
She, on the other side, the dark
rolling dunes of the Philippine Sea.

And, having made
a true and everlasting Kashawing,
he has loosened his knotted tie.
She has taken the gold pins
from her long hair.
In the heat-waves of fiesta at noon-day,
there, in the music of bandurrias,
their feet are off-balance from
the sudden shock of the collision
of east and west. Her island-black eyes
reflected in his English-blue eyes
are wider and deeper now,
glowing with light, like all
the houses on Bagumbayan Pequeno Street.

And everything is moving there
on the horizon,
blue on blue,
both of them transformed,
she by his cool European ice, and he,
by her bright island birds.


* Kashawing: a promise to the Gods


(Happy Tenth Anniversary, Marc and Grace!)