The photos from the poem below were taken by my niece Mary Rose at the Abo-Abo river in Bataan.
I have an appointment with Life.
She stands in the river as my mother,
she is the river, too, her arms rippling streams
and the low-hanging branches of the willow trees.
She calls me to bathe
in the material realm.
A bath in the mud, a bath in a crystal pool,
it is all the same.
She embraces me as Tara,
my most miserable Self
sagging like fruit
on her loving vines.
I have an appointment with Life.
She sends me away from my Motherland
to the land of the Enemy so that I
can be a lotus sprouting from the muck.
She springs forth like Durga, a weapon in each hand,
at every turn on the Path.
I watch the debris float and settle around me,
as I reach for the sun, the mud a shadow
getting smaller behind me as I ascend.
I have an appointment with Life.
She tells me to watch my family
from across her ring of fire,
to witness their sorrows and joys,
to draft a map from their bodies
so that I may withstand the winds overhead.
It is this distance between my family and myself
that makes a great garden of the sea
from which the drowning find the sprawling roots
and hold on for dear Life.
Life braids the roots as Sarasvati, smiling,
as if to say, “See what we have created?”
Apart, far away, that is my duty in this appointment with Life.
To stand beside women and children the way my mother
emulates the Goddess, the river,
the willow tree, the prophet,
her singing voice translating the language of light
into the language of sound: all nourishment,
the cool shade and the cool water,
the delicate light of the sun
glittering the sound waves.
She lives in my fingers as Laxmi,
my hands waving in the blue-black sky, beacons
attracting the wild wanderers in the sobbing night.
— July 8, 2026
I honor my mother and bow at the seat of her altar for she is a fractal of Life from which I have gained all knowledge. I bow to all bodhisattvas who endure suffering so that we may awaken including my birth mother and my mother-in-law. Om tare tuttare ture svah. Om braam breem broum Budhaya namah. Om Muni Muni Mahamuni Shakyamuniye svah.