Encanto
Childhood is an abandoned pathway
leading to the old rice mill,
where you hid from Nora and Tonio,
your neighbors’ children who never found you
after you crawled into the old banyan,
where Primitivo, the encanto, lived.
Your playmates missed you sorely,
and never knew where you went
until dusk when your brother found you
in soiled clothes, your face spent as ash,
hardly breathing near the shed.
No one cared, then, if you still knew
night from day. You were possessed
by the primitive spirit, your folks said.
Everywhere you went after that game
of hide-and-seek, you were always trying to hide,
maybe scared of being seen or found out:
in the recesses of the subdivision, in the college parking lot,
inside a filthy, dilapidated movie house,
all over the city streets of ill-repute.
You were still looking for Primitivo, they said,
the savage spirit that enchanted you.
NOTE:
Encanto. Enchanted, or enchanter. A being from the magical realm
PHOTO:
Basco, Batanes lads
(MLK)
