There is something about humidity and heat that just makes you want to relive moments when you felt you were on fire. Just as the temperature in Manila reached record highs, I found an online poem that burned with passion.
It speaks of a woman’s love that finds heaven in the nearness of the beloved and of isolated moments now woven into a seamless story. The poem is also a short narrative about how even a short wide-eyed gaze can turn an unremarkable instant into a source of amazement, pleasure and wonder.
I love reading poems when it rains. But even if there was not a drop of rain today, this poem still made me wish I was penning verses now instead of typing html codes for a website. It is simple yet profound, finished yet incomplete, direct yet enigmatic, all at the same time. Written by Sarah Gonzalez, it is entitled “Staring At You and Thinking”.
I remember staring at you
at Metro Cafe thinking:
God, I love this guy.
I remember staring at you
in a local bookshop when you arrived
from a thousand-mile journey:
God, is he still mine?
I remember staring at you
while you were sleeping:
God, he is mine yet he isn’t.
I remember staring at you
when we had that dinner in Nivel:
God, is he really in love with me now?
I remember staring at you
across the embassy in Malate:
God, I can’t believe this…
I remember staring at you
in Manila Cathedral and thinking:
God, he is finally mine.
I remember staring at you
when we became one and thinking:
God, I am in heaven.
I remember staring at you
ever since and thinking:
GOD, THANK YOU!
I liked it. Gone are the days I was into writing poems…
your introduction was a poem in itself. you should get back to penning verses. you have a gift of weaving words into a delightful tapestry of variegated emotions. i love writing poems too esp on times when i feel downright sad. but right now, my life is filled to the brim with happiness, and for some reason i could not put a finger on… when i am happy, words elude me. thanks for sharing to us this poem. interesting post, as usual.
Deuts and Auntie Chang, you’ve just made the poet happy. Sarah thought that her poem is banal and that only she and her beloved could understand its subtleties. I think anybody who has truly been in love can see the fire in the poem.
…when we became one…
The verses before this, there was only the longing, like the thirsting of a parched land missing the rain. Whew!I’m glad this poem ended in this ego-freeing, mystical mood; when the wall that separates between the gazer and the object of her gaze is dissolved. Gradually, this mystical ending is like the union of rain and arid earth – cosmic in scale, intimate in its depth.The wounded world needs more of this mystical experience – when people realize that the other is not an object of gaze; not an enemy; not a resource for exploitation. We only need to dissolve the ego in the process of gazing to be happy! Peace man.Peace woman.Peace in the floor of the ocean.Peace among the Martians!
Poems surely eases me down and makes me float on air with love…As it is sweet as a narrative itself, it projects that sensual feeling of being loved as loving that special someone. Oh my, now i’m in love AGAIN! Thanks Fr. Stephen!
The Simplicity Reality Honesty Committed Patient
Intense Passion and understanding gives beauty and colors to this poem. What the poet’s felt surely its heaven I understand.