© Maria Evelyn Quilla Soleta While the month of June is especially associated with brides,
summer and the pretty flowers around us, let us also not forget
that the month pays tribute to the heroes of our lives, our fathers. I wish to honor my own father, Tatay Jose, with love and affection, this poem I wrote a few days after he passed away. TATAY JOSE I look up the staircase and he is not there looking down at me. I cannot find him anywhere. I look around his tangy-scented room but I see his lifeless rocking-chair. The television, electric fan, and radio are turned off. The curtains are no longer drawn apart. Oh, how stiff! How still! I do not hear the squeaking of the floor in the heavy steps he wobbly made with a cane towards his bedroom door. The bathroom faucet no longer drips. I spot a barely used bath soap, and there rests his pair of slippers. The green lunch tray is tenderly put aside along with the other wares, such as his time-worn thermos bottle. Cards and photographs crowd his headboard. The beddings and clothes are all put away. Very reverently. Very neatly. Everything is silent with the world. All, except for the tick-tock, tick-tock Of his old, needle-crafted wall clock. I step out inconsolably with tears in my eyes and feel the balustrade that for many years was wrapped by his weak and calloused hands. He has not left. I hear his voice in the song of the bird and his laughter in the cool rustling wind. It is the sweet remembrance Of his memory that stays And lingers on So very dearly. © MARIA EVELYN QUILLA SOLETA Philippines