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he ancestral house seemed smaller, today seen with eye glasses The pathway seemed shorter, the mangoes grow loftier It was once open field across the hill Mushrooming subdivisions had blossomed The little flower orchard had vanished But anyhow we felt it would still be remembered Harrowingly different, but pretty much the same There was an unfamiliar children’s “bahay-bahayan” On that path that we arranged In front of that sagging waiting shed that stands Beside the curve, where the old Mango tree grew Surprisingly, forty years folded one summer day And hurriedly become a springtime of our memory of many growing trees, of many festivities a spot where I wept one night after my mother died and spent longer, in starry-starry nights holding newborn offspring Yes....it is all there, in that small ancestral home Facetious, but I'm glad they kept the wooden parrot It has the same green eyes That big black statue of St. Roque, along a stony pathway that we laid still sits behind the curve, where the old mango tree grew