LITERARY: Pilipinas, My Childhood Forest Princess

By Bella Balisi-Bevilaqcua

Pilipinas, My Childhood Forest Princess

By Bella Balisi-Bevilacqua, 11 PM, September 10, 2025, PT, Burnaby, BC

I grew up with your hush by the mangrove door,

Forest Princess, Pilipinas, my myth and lore,

In cradle storms, you soothed the island’s roar,

Your leaves were lullabies. I begged for more,

Beneath your boughs I hid my ragged sore,

You cupped my fears and set them on the shore,

Your rivers taught my pulse its tidal score,

Your dusk untied the knots that daylight wore,

I learned to kneel where roots entwine the floor,

To hear the earth confess what wounds ignore,

But miners came with mouths of iron ore,

They bit your veins and called it simply “work” – but more,

The air grew thin, the birds unbraided o’er,

A mourning wind knocked gently at your door,

I tasted rust like prayers that turn to war,

The moon looked on, a cataracted sore,

Your hair—those pines—feel shorn in greedy chore,

The night was bruised, a purple, pulsing sore,

I held your face and felt the timber’s gore,

And begged the dark to forge a different lore,

O motherland, O child I can’t restore,

I am the witness you have bled before,

I am the salt that stings your ocean floor,

I am the throat that cannot help but roar,

Each stump is a rib removed from the sacred core,

Each road a knife slipped under memory’s door,

The rain arrives and drowns a missing shore,

The mountain coughs, its lungs now ash and ore,

The deer unlearns the paths it knew of yore,

The eagle curls, a rag of broken soar,

In catechism nights I pace your shore,

And count my sins in sap and sorrow’s ore,

I knock on saints, and saints refuse the chore,

Their candles gutter, pooling on the floor,

My shadow lengthens, tethered to your core,

A child again outside your breathing door,

I call you “Princess” through the jungle core,

And vow my mouth to be your broken oar,

To row your name through every city shore,

To bruise the silence till it yields a roar,

Forgive me if my hands have asked for more,

If hunger made me blind to living lore,

If I believed in gold that rots the score,

If I kept still while saws snore,

Tonight, I plant a prayer like a stubborn spore,

Wish I could trade my sleep to be your watchman’s oar,

I stitch the sky with vows you can implore,

Until your heart regrows its emerald store,

Until the storms find armour as before,

And you rise, Philippines, Forest Princess, Queen once more! (MBB)