Hope, In Triad Poem by Aida Santos

1
Below, we peer:
The goddesses of faith
Turning once more.

A decade or more
Of missing each other’s boats,
We are fated to meet
In the shore where
I’ve often forgotten
There is a sunrise beyond.
We calculate the journey:
No one knows
How far the shore is;
But there is a shore
You say, a woman of clarity.
There, beyond the boats
That got lost in the fogs
All these years.
They simply followed the beacon
That keeps flickering in the distance.
We calculate the shore,
Hands clasped holding the sail, as if
We would get lost again.


2
The seasons have been alternatively
Stormy and sunny:
Dry land stoked by the absence of rain.
Sometimes floods ruined the harvested rice.
Everyone covers their faces in tears
Or waves hands in anger.
The seasons of our lives
Are precocious: too subdued
For anyone to take notice.
Sometimes, it’s water everywhere
Where drowning is a fate that awaits
The unknowing children.
Or too fiery we hide from what
Should have been joyful summers.
But we mortals, through time,
Endure the vagaries of life,
And the storms are but part
Of the sailing, before we see the sun
Drying the earth that once floated flotsams
Of broken dreams and shattered lives.


3
Yes, that era of loves and loving
Through shards of broken windows
That looked into ghosts utterly frightening,
Has come to pass.
We must celebrate this season:
It may never come again
In this land where hope is the only refuge
Amidst ruins of ill gotten mansions
And tainted money in pockets of politicos,
In the hands of evils in a house
Beside the Grand River of my people’s history.

And yet there are sparks of joy
In the little victories
Of the heart.