Typhoon Pag-asa
Quezon City, Philippines
2021, High School, Poetry & Spoken Word
The Manila Bay breaks
under a spring storm. I am again five
& watching the flood rise
out of season. There goes a dog
straining to swim. The flashlight dies
so my mother lights a candle
we reserve for birthdays.
The wax slips down the wick. Hours before,
I’d watched the weather gray
& believed it benign; the weather forecast on TV
had promised safety. Still, my mother prays
& prays as the rain comes with a holy vengeance.
Hours later, when the rain stops, we are ushered
downstairs. There goes the TV, shivering
in the water. Our chairs float, but my mother’s sobs
keep my childish hands from riding them. I am five, & the water
is still friendly, the TV always empty
of the numbered dead. In America, I tell my classmates
about the floods & laugh at the memory, preferring not
to let them know of their hellish weight. How they could drag
a five-year-old down under, provide homes
for malaria-infected mosquitoes. An American friend
tells me she drinks water straight from the tap, so I return home
to stare at our dripping faucet, remembering my mother’s warnings about how
the Manila Bay is gagging with trash,
how tap water is not as clean
as we’d wish it to be. I am again five
& listening to my mother tell me it wasn’t
always like this. That the water was clean once. That we could trust
the forecast once. In America, I look for photos of the original
Manila Bay before its waters turned
sluggish with human waste. Instead I find hordes
of people facing a flotsam shore of garbage, trash pickers
in hand. I must be five again with this newborn belief
that there is still time for the TV to find itself empty
of lost lives & homes to report, for us to remember
that the water is not too far gone. Yes, when the Manila Bay swells
with fish & carefree beachgoers, the floods flushed of its greed, I will be five again,
relearning to drink tap water, to dance
at the sight of rain, to trust
freely, safely.
Reflection
Reflection
Typhoons and storms have plagued my birth country, the Philippines, because it’s located in a Pacific Ocean region vulnerable to such natural disasters. Still, the storms have grown steadily worse and erratic—one of my earliest memories involves a typhoon that hit our home especially hard, the flood reaching up to almost five feet. That, combined with many polluted sources of water in Manila (such as Manila Bay or Pasig River), have made water a threat: many die from typhoon-related disasters and diseases each year. Of course, I didn’t know any better when I was young. However, over time and especially once we were taught about climate change in school, I began to see and read about connections between climate change and the growing frequency and strength of extreme weather events in the Philippines. With that in mind, I realized that while there’s still time, the Philippines has to take care of available water resources and invest in climate change initiatives. Also, as someone who lived and studied in the States for many years, I am intimately aware that climate change affects everyone differently, so countries like the Philippines have to give voice to what their people suffer on account of climate change so that less-affected countries who may not understand the urgency may realize their role in stopping this. Truly, the destruction that climate change has already wrecked on my country should be a cause for worldwide awareness and unity to prevent such disasters so that my generation can have a future where we are able “to trust/freely, safely” that climate change would not claim our lives without a fight. In Tagalog, pag-asa means hope, so I titled the poem as such because I believe that to stand united against and to triumph over climate change means continuing to choose hope. After all, the world is long due for a typhoon of hope to crash against every shore.