Friday, July 12, 2024

Verses, Verses, Verses in 3 Sets: Garden - Keyhole to Paradise.

Verses, Verses, Verses

Part 1 - Good wine grows mellow with age;
a good man grows into a sage.

Part 2 - Beauty builds upon beauty,
Ad infinitum to eternity.

Part 3 - Eighteen Verses in a Garden
"Touch me not, yet I did."

Dr Abe V Rotor

Do you hear the trees singing? Painting by the author, Brisbane, 2022 

1. How seldom, if at all, do we weigh our neighbors the way we weigh ourselves with the same favors?

2. Friendship that we share to others multiplies our compassion and love where happiness lies.

3. Evil is evil indeed - so with its mirror,
while goodness builds on goodness in store.



4. That others may learn and soon trust you,
show them you're trustworthy, kind and true.


Morning rainbow, Bamban, Tarlac

5. Kindness and gladness, these however small
are never, never put to waste at all.

6. Beauty seen once breaks a heart, 
Wait for the image to depart.

7. Being right and reasonable;
Black or white, and measurable.

8. She's coy who speaks soft and light;
Smoke first before fire ignites.

9. Every promise you can't keep
Drags you into a deeper pit.


Purple sampaguita (Jasminium sambac)

10. To endure pain of hatred,
A leader’s wisdom is dared.

11. Make believe prosperity;
Sound of vessel when empty.

12. Take from the ant or stork,
Patience is silence at work.

13. He finds reason for living
Who sees a new beginning.

14. Beauty builds upon beauty,
Ad infinitum to eternity.

15. Good wine grows mellow with age; 
a good man grows into a sage. ~

Part 2 - Beauty builds upon beauty,
Ad infinitum to eternity.
 Dr Abe V Rotor
Photos by Marlo R Rotor 

Quirino Bridge, Banaoang Pass, Santa, Ilocos Sur

1. Sunset
Call it beauty,
the color of war,
and death itself;
it is enough,
the passing of day.
the coming of night.

Manressa Retreat House, QC

2. Paper Stars
Strewn with a pattern most queer,
Stars tells us of the destiny of men;
Wouldn’t a genius from slumber stir,
Or a faithful pray beyond Amen? ~

Rainbow, Morong, Bataan

3. Living Impressions
Pray, but if Thor holds back the lightning bolts,
We may not have mushroom and the jolts.

4. Hush! Suddenly the world became still;
Gone is the lark or the raven on the sill.

5. Saxon wall, each turret a guard-
Now empty, lonely is war afterward.

6. Radial symmetry starts from the center,
That balances an outside force to enter.

7. What good is a lamp at the ledge?
Wait 'til the day reaches its edge.

8. In seeing our past we find little to share,
If the past is the present we're living in.

9. In abstract art you lose reality;
How then can I paint truth and beauty?

10. Brick wall, brick roof, brick stair,
Glisten in the rain, dull in summer air.

11. What's essential can't be seen by the eye
Like the faith of Keller and Captain Bligh.

12. Similar is rainbow and moth in flight
When you see them against the light.

13. From respite in summer fallow,
The fields start a season anew.

14.From green to gold the grains become
As they store the power of the sun.

15. Not all sand dunes for sure
Ends up on empty shore.

16. One little smoke tells the difference,
Like a faint pulse is life's reference.

17. It's collective memory that I'm a part
To write my life's story when I depart.

18. Lost time, lost opportunity and lost gain,
like passing wind that may not come again.

19. Who sees silver lining of clouds dark and bold
seeks not at rainbow's end a pot of gold.

20. A clenched fist softens under a blue sky
like high waves, after tempest, die.

Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB AM, [www.pbs.gov.ph] 8-9 evening class Monday to Friday

Part 3 - Eighteen Verses in a Garden
Touch me not, yet I did


Rainforest, Wall Mural St Paul University QC by the author

1. Red, red, oh, the bleeding drops of red,
Erythryna, Erythrina,
Stain my palms and feet and my side
And I shall never doubt Him again,
Nevermore, nevermore!

2. Euphorbia splendens, that name is honor
for your lowly kind with cruel thorns,
for you surpass the glory of the Sequoia;
bestowed a throne on the head of the Holy One
flows the color of your flower,
flows the faith of a multitude.

3. Touch me not.
Yet I did.
Shy to my touch.
You shrunk.
Touch me not.

4. They say you are a False Bird of Paradise
left behind after the Fall;
with one sweep of the mighty sword
to smite the sinful, you survived,
and now bear the color of that sword
as golden as your soul.

5. Yellow bells:
what chime,
what song,
what music,
what message
come forth
from you
in the morning
of your full bloom?
Shhh... listen.

6. Lantana, odorous yet amorous
in many mysterious ways,
leaving scent in the misty air,
trails for some beautiful wings,
a kaleidoscope of sun rays.

7. Wings, wings - they are not all that fly,
or they fly in the mind, like fragrance
riding in purest colors, as dewdrops
become nectar, and nectar into dewdrops,
greeting the morning sun,
sinking, sinking, gone.

8. I like the fig; it is mysterious:
its flowers ensconced inside its fruit
become seeds by the wand
of a wasp, a fairy in disguise
to bestow the humble a prize.

9. Grow, grow fast with the season,
Ride high on the southeast monsoon;
Grow, grow fast and hide in the mist,
Before the caterpillars have their feast.

10. Dress up quickly and beam with valor;
Youth is fleeting for both frail and bold;
Play with the sun in rainbow's colors,
After the equinox, the wind grows cold.


Yellow waterlily, SPUQC Garden

11. Mimicry's the name of the game,
all in survival's name;
defense and offense,
conceit and deceit -
cloaked in beauty
or nonsense.

12. We love to play the flower game"
"Loves me, love me not." It's also sane.
If I ask, "What do other creatures gain?"
Ask the butterflies, the bees and the bane.


Bromeliads

13. Bromeliad - trees would be bare without you;
You hang on their limbs, and blossom, too;
Deep in your bosom some little ponds lie,
Oasis to fish, frog and dragonfly.

14. How sweet it is to recall
memories beyond the hall;
the meanest flower of the vale,
the simplest note that swells the gale;
the morning sun, the air and skies -
it's keyhole to Paradise.


Climbing velvet vine across a fence. Don Antonio Heights 2, QC

15. There is a beautiful maid, her bonnet velvet -
it is all but in the mind enslaved:
Annals of suffering clouded into the night,
Soon die with this pretty sight.

16. Jewels in the morning designed,
to rave the sensuous mind;
in the morning they sparkle,
at noon droop and wrinkle,
bleated and dry and blind.

17. Frolic while it's May,
before the sun's last ray;
blessed in the blossomed hour
of an ephemeral flower.

18. "Do sheep eat flowers with thorns?"
Asked the Little Prince a grownup.
Roses may have the answer,
But we humans miss the point. ~

Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday

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