Peñaranda Park Revisited

(Haikus: Nostalgia on lost grandeur of an old park.)
(This park of my childhood: the spark of my adulthood.)

new arches subdue
shifting shades of old splendor
when shadows carve light

lace of black iron
replaced bygone yellow bells
where green lawn once lazed

dry fountains agape
mock sky in concrete stillness
sans crickets’ anthem

grey mats of cement
now reside upon the ground
carpet of grass, gone

gone too, chirping birds
daransi-an* they were called
in the days of old

peñaranda, yes
the park remains where it was
minus the splendor.


- between old and new is alteration.

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* Black birds with red eyes (now rarely seen);
they used to inhabit the trees and yellow bell
flowers around Peñaranda Park and the belfry
of St. Gregory Cathedral across the park.
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(c) Chito L. Aguilar