Hindi ko mahuli ang mga tutubi
Pipitasin ko'ng alaala ng gabi.
At pakakawalan sa hangin sapagkat
Hindi ko mahuli ang mga tutubi.
Ang anino mo'y wala sa aking tabi,
Kaya't hahanapin kita datapwat
Alaala'y pitas lang mula sa gabi.
Mula sa lungkot, ako ay maghahabi
Ng kwento ng pag-ibig nating alamat
Ng hindi ko mahuling mga tutubi.
Wala nang saysay pa ang magdalamhati
Kung hindi mo rin mababatid bagamat
Pinitas ko na'ng alaala ng gabi.
Tagulaylay nitong aking puso'y hindi
Kailanman magkakatotoo kaya't
Hulihin natin itong mga tutubi.
Lagi kong hanap ang iyong mga labi,
Gayong pag-asa ay hindi madalumat.
Pipitasin ko'ng alaala ng gabi.
Dahil 'di ko mahuli'ng mga tutubi.
here are two pathetic attempts, one at writing a villanelle, and the second at macro photography. i took the shot of the two dragonflies, trying to remember if like the preying mantis or the black widow, the male gets killed after he has inseminated the female's eggs. of course i don't have the right lens for this shot, so this is actually a tightly cropped image of the larger one i took. i couldn't really get much close to my subject because they'd easily fly away. i wanted to post it somewhere, and suddenly remembered that i had written something about dragonflies. i found it in my old poetry notebook, and it's in the form of a villanelle -- look it up on wikipedia. the form is pretty old, and consists of repeating the first and third line of the first stanza, and then closing the poem with the two lines that repeat. probably the most famous villanelle i could think of is the one by dylan thomas: do not go gentle into that good night/old age should rave and burn at close of day/rage, rage against the dying of the light. i'm not sure if i said that right because i typed it from memory. anyway it's pathetic as a villanelle because of its use of very amateur images. even the rhyming is a bit tenuous. note that i wrote this when i was still in my teens. i could probably revise it, but i realize i'm worse off as a poet now than when i was an amateur and immature teenager.