Marjorie Evasco left Manila to
regrow roots in her home island,
Bohol, in the Central Visayas of
the Philippines. She continues
to write in two languages,
Binisaya and English, care for a
garden, and plant trees. She’s
committed to work for literary
and cultural development and
teaches graduate school.Visit worldlit.org to hear
the author read her poem
“Farol de Combate” in Binisaya.POETRY
Pollen
by Marjorie Evasco
for Corazon Jamero-LogartaThis is the time when the spirit has no need of teeth,
and in the time it takes pollen to light,
the wild world tames us...- Linda Hogan, “Gentling the Human”
In the space of a fortnight a nasty cough
took lodgings in my lungs, I curled fern-
like in bed, not to sleep, but to keep awake
to the motions of poetry throwing filaments
of light, the way a resident spider brings
bright symmetries to being from its almost-
invisible body. These slow motions the orange
jasmine in the front garden also musters
out of its two-and-a-half foot trunk, shivering
in the wake of the northerlies blown across
the steppes of Siberia to Southeast Asia, as if
it knows near blossoming time has come,
its clusters of white already in the arc of dream,
the gold flecks riding on that morning fragrance
of sun, or on the legs of a drunken worker bee.
It is possible to sense this now a chrysalis,
the gathering strength needing the full dark
softness from which to unfurl, bear new fire.WORLDLIT.ORG 47