fucked up in muck
stuck deep into
luck­less
quag­mires.
black­hole of the past
pulling in a
tug-of-war of desires.

Wrote this some years back, but I’ve refur­bished and edited it. It is good to go back and rewrite “old” poems. On the one hand, they are writ­ten at a cer­tain time in your life; a time long for­got­ten maybe, a time long gone. They are cross sec­tions, encap­su­la­tions and dis­til­la­tions of feel­ings, thoughts, emo­tions that take a life of its own, is writ­ten to paper, and becomes poetry.

Several weeks ago, I got a call from two of my for­mer stu­dents who were sib­lings. Their dad died sud­denly. They flew in from Cebu early morn­ing. I met them at the hos­pi­tal. We went to the morgue.

The first time I read this book by Parker Palmer, it was just before I went on the retreat that changed my life.
Voca­tion does not come from will­full­ness. It comes from listening.Life is dif­fer­ent now. I am no longer as con­fused as I was before. I went through a dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship the past years and I have just recently moved on from it. I have a good career. I’m think­ing about study­ing again. And I plan to teach some­time in the future.
Life is good. The uni­verse is …

This was writ­ten in Sacred Heart Novi­tiate the day Fr. John Moran died– Decem­ber 26, 1999. He was our “lolo” (grand­fa­ther) in the Novi­tiate, help­ing out the for­ma­tion team in his own strong pres­ence. A char­ac­ter, I was actu­ally afraid of him because he always seemed to be always angry. And yet in unguarded moments, he was sur­pris­ingly gen­tle. I remem­ber him being very patient with me and the giddy-ness of my youth. And he allowed me to joke with him over lunch. Some­times, he would even allow him­self to laugh with me.