Editor's Note: The Halo-Halo Review is immensely honored to present Linda Ty-Casper's first and only stand-alone poem after writing a poem in grade school that garnered her a check for one peso. We consider this publication a historic literary moment since Linda Ty-Casper is more well-known as a fictionist, having written 15 novels, novellas, and short stories. Please go HERE to see an accompanying essay about this poem and Linda Ty-Casper's poetry. This feature is also The Halo-Halo Review's birthday present to this writer who turns 94 years old today. Dear Linda: Happy Birthday!
Running Secretly, Singing
*
I must admit some days beat like a bird
inside my heart.
Its beak stabs.
Its feathers molt.
And I can only weep.
Some days, I must admit,
come so quietly I think I am at peace.
I think it is the next day
too far away to hurt.
Some days are like swallows.
Only the tips of their flying touch me.
*
Some days, when I cannot carry the weight
of a single word,
Like a bird from a different forest
my body sings
running words together
in and out of key.
I also sing to lie to myself.
I sing because someone might bury me
if I fall silent.
I notice some trees sing.
And stones sing.
Attempting to climb above the sun, light sings.
Grass sings.
The men with seven or eleven fingers sing.
And lying, accusing
confessing, breathing
are also singing.
*
I don’t remember the wind moving deep and still.
Full of blooms.
I don’t recall the sun swinging
with hungry arms
above the wind.
But I remember stones lighter than rain,
birds clinging with their beaks
to summer.
*
I tell the day by how long
it takes the road to turn.
The sun tells it in languages overheard.
The moon guesses.
It’s here. It’s gone.
And time again to ask what day.
It takes more than I have of courage
not to ask.
It takes memory not to know,
to make promises.
*
In honor of my coming
My parents opened the window of their house.
It clung to the sun.
They set the chairs against the light,
covered the table with newspapers,
lit an empty box for a candle.
We didn’t have time to sit together.
The years—twenty, thirty—of mutual absence—
sat between us.
I cried. They cried.
But not together.
*
Once, I received a letter addressed to a house
we’ve never lived in.
Keep in touch, it said.
I turned it over, tore the corners.
Nothing fell out.
It bore my name, nothing else.
I should write to the house
to ask for directions.
*
The stars fix the hours as they please.
The minutes do not count.
I find myself in attitudes of prayer,
but not praying;
of grief, but not sad;
of love, but not loving.
I keep trying.
*
I have trouble realizing how strange time is.
It plunges through trees madly
pursuing, like a hunter.
Then, when I take chase, refuses to move,
to complete my life.
Keep its promises.
So close to being gone.
It moves again
forming like budwood.
Crying, like a lost child.
Stretching its hand
to where it is afraid to go.
*
The sun flowers in secret petals.
All the happiness I feel
is someone else’s.
I cannot taste the sweetness.
*
I walked over to the yard across.
Between the thorns
through trees that hid the river
from my window.
It flows dry past my garden.
Resuming, after.
The neighbors watched me cut branches.
The upper part with hidden roots I gave them.
I kept the shade.
They thought I did it for them
and thanked me.
*
I pressed my face upon the lily
reaching for the sky.
The sun began to climb my neck,
its waves gentle.
There are other skies.
*
Little by little my hidden garden fades
I line stones to water it.
It sends up roots instead of branches;
I bury fish beside them.
String it to the sun.
I dig. I cry.
And find myself growing in its place
etoliating
with neither grace nor fire.
*
The trees we planted twenty years ago
are taller than the house.
They intercept the sun
They cannot cross the sky.
Wind cannot blow through their tangles.
I dig monardas to lure hummingbirds
and think of those that never took.
The ones that loopers defoliated their first summer.
The yard is full of their memory,
their absent leaves bearing thorns
In place of flowers.
*
I opened the door of my house,
stood at the top of the steps
for someone to come.
Stood by the closed door.
It may be that nothing is worth taking.
So I rained down laces.
Hurled earrings.
Dropped silver spoons.
I dangled.
Still, no one.
*
I have this habit of dusting
only where it shows.
Pieces of glass lie broken
underneath the ferns
And this other habit I have
of running up and down the hours
I have to break, too.
*
Sometimes, to hide, I take off my clothes.
Pull threads apart
and slip them under the pillows.
Expecting sunless dreams.
Bodies no longer lifting
from brown encirclements.
Like dead wells buried in dust
In the morning, fresh from anguish,
I weave the threads back together,
cover my face,
and breathe through the altered
heart.
*
I come as a surprise to myself.
I say what I did not think.
I think what I did not feel.
Someone must be making my arms move
when all I want is to be still.
My tongue speaks
when all I wish is to be good.
*
Here I am again
disturbing myself with things
I have no name for.
Hurting myself with what never happened.
Yet, I am my best friend.
If I have to lie
I do it to myself.
Keeping all the pain.
Some days my thoughts outstare the sun.
Subdued, they move dark
inside begonias.
*
My heart builds each day slowly.
Foraging.
Resisting desires.
It tries retreat.
But footsteps track it down
traveling two abreast.
*
I find living quite annoying.
Shoes must fit.
Phones must be answered.
Doors must be polished.
And one must recognize oneself
to move.
All this takes time
of which life has not enough.
*
Sundays, I take coffee.
Spread it on my brow.
Butter it on my palms.
Test it with my toe.
After it gets cold, I pour it
for the birds,
The price of coffee is beyond their means.
Besides, it shines their feathers
and they can preen
While I,
can wait for Monday
to have tea again.
*
I passed yards and yards for sale.
House after house
of cups without lips.
In none was there for sale
dreams unattached to sleep
or pieces matching what I have.
Only linen much abused.
Dresses old before their fabric.
Shoes, the feet that pushed them
out of shape
imprisoned in the leather
Toys, the hands that tugged at them
still at the rips.
I have my own of those.
*
I’ve heard the wails of hidden angels
like a waterfall that doesn’t reach the earth,
that hangs forever
from now to now.
I called to them.
Only myself answered.
I could not see or hear
or feel the throb
or recognize a lie.
*
He said I have hills,
lifting them with his tongue.
I shuddered.
I have other dreams that interrupt my hours
raging like bees
plunging from rivers in the sky
like trees full of wings
silent like circles.
He excites them with his fingers.
Lifts them with his eyes.
And I sleep.
*
In the same sleep, horses pull the air apart.
Gnashing.
I open the windows,
feel my arms reaching to push.
In the morning all are closed
as if I am an empty house
that needed to be sealed.
*
Some mornings I wake up with
the anger of the day before
still inside
cutting, like crystals
in the eye.
I try to wash it out.
It stays.
I shout curses.
Unable to bear its face on mine it leaves.
But then, it’s morning again.
*
My dream brought me down once
in Antofagasta.
I saw children licking rain out of the sky.
It leaked right out of their bones.
The mountain turned to mud
and buried the morning.
The same thing happened in Cauit
In Antipolo. Bocaue.
I climbed back on my dream
before I got stranded.
*
My dream speaks in languages I do not know.
Sometimes, in numbers.
To make it stick to someone else
I tempt it to have its own dream.
It moans, laughing.
I try to pry it loose.
It laughs, moaning.
Apparently, it means to have me.
*
Lately, dreams refuse to come.
I wake up with nothing that happened in my sleep.
I sleep, nothing happened
in my waking.
Unopposed, I have nothing to be strong against.
*
On principle I do not trust the sun.
It could stop rising after I learned to expect it.
On the same principle I resent flowers
so certain of themselves
they feed on the cracks of my thoughts
thinking to make me smile.
Stones are safer.
But one risks remembering with them,
promising.
And air adorns itself with fragrances
breaking into sealed flesh,
unsealing them.
*
The only thing to do is to wait for nothing to happen.
Then there will be nothing to disappoint.
One cannot be displaced then.
But if nothing should happen
how do I know nothing did?
*
It surprises me
that those who have what I should have
resent me for deserving it.
*
Just now I saw my enemy
enter the house of my friend.
I imagine them saying good things about me.
Happy to have a friend who asks my enemy over
I return their thoughts to them
for whom no road is wide enough.
For whom the sky has to climb higher
to escape the prick of their ambition.
At least I saw her go in.
I can expect to see her leave.
*
As far as hell I went today
I built its fire upon the stove
with cards and crackers
bits of things, my watch and loneliness.
I don’t know how to reach beyond.
I know everyone’s name.
But not my own: is it I?
The same as yours?
*
It must be innocence that makes me think
at forty-seven,
womb-plucked, I can bear again.
That my aunts will wait for me to come
before they die.
Hear my thoughts of them
that sear the sky.
But I forget to write to them in the morning.
*
Often enough I tell myself
there is no point in telling the truth
or in lying.
But I ignore the warning and try to write.
Remembering, I build a fire to burn the pages.
Hide pages at the bottom shelves, about eye level.
But I’m often tempted to pull them out.
Rummage.
Tired of being curious,
I pasted a hole in the mirror.
In my bed I carved a hollow
smaller than myself.
*
47. Is that the year of your birth
or the day of the week?
You say berries are buried in gardens.
All they yield are thorns,
making nooses of the grass.
There are alternate seasons
but all I feel is cold.
I have to stand up for myself,
counter you with lies.
I tell you, bones are buried
in hanging gardens.
I’ll make more up as I use them.
And tempt you to lie.
*
The price of ink and paper I can afford.
Writing is different.
I know enough words to fill a book.
I know the alphabet.
I’ve tried not trying.
*
So I can write the truth, or part of it.
I try different words
describing where a man fell,
shattered by shellfire
that blast unsuspecting trees.
To write his bones are lily-white
is to blast him again.
I need words that explode as flesh does.
Words that bear the anguish of a woman
running, clutching a pillow
she thought was her child.
Words that cut.
The way flamethrowers melt the flesh
of women hiding their children
in the folds of their skirt,
muffling their cries that alert the killers.
Somewhere on Taft, February 1945.
Ambushed at the corners in Paco,
Tennessee.
Words that describe roads
lined with blasted houses.
Rice fields where dead bodies rim the dikes.
Churchyards where dogs fight over bodies
who sought refuge inside.
How do I find words
to celebrate each life that
bullets hit
when Manila was liberated?
*
I’ve been asked to submit
a piece of long fiction.
Words deep enough,
significant, humanly ordinary but
Universal.
Inspiring, able to lift us to the sky.
Also entertaining.
Private but visible.
That can be read in one sitting
and will not leave a taste
or the bite of a wound.
Out of life (comic). Into life (tragic).
Perfect, ponderable. Masking grief.
Maybe next year. Next life. Or, never.
*
Lately, I haven’t been seen around much.
What have you been doing?
Writing. But not that much.
Singing. A little of that.
What I’ve been a lot of
is dying.
It doesn’t take much.
Do you want to hear about that?
*
For days now, three? I’ve been reciting my sins
that bear no resemblance to anyone’s.
Of my peculiar doing,
I’ve hidden them where I cannot find them.
Until, absolved, I can hide them again.
Myself willing.
*
I’m trying to find a better word for love.
The human kind
though seals and trees might feel them.
The kind that bears its thorns lovingly
as pearls.
And doesn’t speak or ask.
*
There is another word, I think, for grace.
It slipped my mind just now.
It has to do with turning the other cheek
so only the smile shows.
With keeping your eyes dry
while your body weeps.
With saying what you mean
with words you won’t regret.
*
I meant to go to church today
tut remembered the other people.
Paul, himself, when he noticed
people, took to writing letters.
All those hands I have to shake
unravel my prayers.
*
All the songs He cannot sing
God makes me.
He tires the arms I lift to Him.
He knows but will not tell me my name.
*
If He wanted to find me
He could.
For that matter, death could.
We live in the same country.
Hour after hour the sun plunges headlong
out of the sky
Standing on ceremonies.
My knees can no longer bend
My fingers cannot hold the beads
or release the chain.
Yet, I keep singing
Awake.
*
In the end, how can Saint Peter
tell which war killed which:
by the wounds perhaps.
Or who succumbed to which government
foreign or their own.
Who simply gave up,
dying by themselves
If he had to know,
Saint Peter will have trouble
guessing about me.
*
When the Kingdom comes
If I am saved in it
and brought to the tree
that first yielded
I must remember to ask
If I will be allowed
a moment to myself.
My own dream. And waking.
An eternity in a closed garden.
.
***
SELECTED RECENT LINKS ON LINDA TY-CASPER
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Ty_Casper
Positively Filipino’s “A Second Life For Linda Ty-Casper’s ‘Three-Cornered Sun’” by Cecilia Manguerra-Brainard: https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/a-second-life-for-linda-ty-caspers-novel-three-cornered-sun
Esquire Philippines’ “Lives Remembered, Histories Regained” by Charlie Samuya Veric: https://www.esquiremag.ph/culture/books-and-art/lives-remembered-histories-regained-a7837-20250908-lfrm2
Positively Filipino’s “Linda Ty-Casper, Master Storyteller” by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard: https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/linda-ty-casper-master-storyteller
The Halo Halo Review’s “The Early Short Stories of Linda Ty-Casper” by Lynn M. Grow: https://halohaloreview.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-early-short-stories-of-linda-ty.html
Exploding Galaxies’ “Filipino author Linda Ty-Caspeer on life, writing and remembering”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbHnmP2MQag&t=19s
Positively Filipino’s “Remembering A Life Well-Lived” by Lynn M. Grow: https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/remembering-a-life-well-lived
