There will be a clown at my little 
girl’s party.  He will shape dogs
from balloons, paint flowers across
cheeks.  The sun will outline each smile,
each child will run and jump and eat candy.
My little girl will be five, and soon will start
the passage of education, will soon remove
the clown from her moving memory, she will have 
popped the balloon dog long before she gets married, 
has children—
long before I have a chance to remember the sun’s
fiery shape, yet her wings will stay flapping within my
aging mind. 

© 2006 Felino Soriano

May’s Devotional # 53

Depression is invisible and visible 
like the wind’s moving music,
and like the wind can be calm and vicious,
can end can begin, upend and lie down
softly like feathers atop farmland at dawn.
I know nothing about it coming, only 
when it knocks at the door of my day, forces
through, pilots my senses and performs
its stunts as I sit as its passenger, waiting
and waiting for the ending to begin, 
for the ongoing night to pass into
dawn.  Once the rustling ends, my breathing
softens, the attack unfolds into peace,
into the visibility of a smile.

© 2006 Felino Soriano

May’s Devotional # 54

I’m walking behind my tiny
home, between the fingers of a slim alley,
and find a beautiful discarded, green
bottle.  Between the sun and my right
eye I hold it still, as if my eye
were a camera, the sun a background.
After illumination takes place, I smash
the bottle atop the concrete, and see
that wholeness still exists within
the shards, the bottle now more
beautiful sparkling in several
directions. 

© 2006 Felino Soriano