By NERISA DEL CARMEN GUEVARA

Under the shadow of this tree
We are speckled by pieces of sun
Sliding between the leaves.
The wind falls
In slivers
Through the silences
Of roughened bark.

We are above it all
Perched like birds
Sitting on the branch
Like the foamed thoughts
Of the poets meditating
On the sea wall below.

Siquijor seems nearer to us
Than in our dreams.
And when the wind
Slips
Into our shirts,
We puff up like chicks
Wanting to fly.

Nerisa del Carmen Guevara is an Associate Professor teaching at the University of Santo Tomas. She has exhibited her installations and performance pieces at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and other spaces. She has received a Palanca Award for her poetry, a Silver Cup for Dance Solo in the April Spring Festival in Pyongyang, and a Catholic Mass Media Award. She has an M.A. in English Studies from University of the Philippines, Diliman, and she is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing in the same university. A featured Southeast Asian performance artist, her documentaries Elegies and Infinite Gestures are currently in the archives of The Live Art Digital Agency (LADA), London. Guevara has done performance art pieces for the Philippine International Performance Art Festival, SIPA International Performance Art Festival, PERFORMATURA, and Grace Exhibition Space, New York. Her poetry is collected in Reaching Destination: Poems and the Search for Home [UST, 2004].