POETRY
Monsoon Arkin Frany
The sky opens to show its contents: gray with wind and rain. Today, there is mercy as light pours from a retreating raincloud – radiance for reprieve. This morning, when the showers showed no signs of ceasing the worst of September’s storms, I ruminated over sinigang or sinampalukan in this workstation. The clotheslines, heavy with last week’s laundry, ruin my train of thought. There is the occasional cup of coffee contemplated by the raindropspeckled window. Remind to wipe the windshield from the inside, the wipers can only do so much for the mist clinging on the glass and mirror. Today, nothing but the dark rumble of thunder roiling with my bourgeois reveries. Blurring the line between work and rest, I slow down. Time comes in droves as rain drenches the roads. Outside the building, cars crawl in caution in the rain. Maharlika – this restless and gentle river stagnant in this weather: a slow motion world, now intruded by this rainless column of calm. Spotlight sweeping the earth with a memory of dryness. As if to confirm, I offer my hand, hold it out for a sign, a single drop on palm like alms, I look up and pray to the gray sea above pierced by a lonely light. Here, there is scarcity of blue, only this translucence, this veiled brilliance in the after-rain, retreating. A drop lands, makes music with my skin, escapes once more into the air as if to say, “look, here in your hand you hold a cloud.”
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