Summer and youth

Summer is slowly sliding away. The clear blue sky where once reigned a raging sun is now blanketed by unmoving clouds. From these rain falls to the ground with arbitrary constancy, now a more drizzle, now a disastrous flow.

Where are the youth whom summer enticed to frolic in beaches and shady lakes? Where are the young hearts that summer thrilled into discovering the magic of partnership? Gone… gone, to the byways of the world-- to their classrooms or work places, or back to their homes, there to count the days and more days until summer comes around again.

Summer and youth, youth and summer-- what excitement, what thrill! And when the romance is over with the onset of years, what a sad memory.

I was there once in the embrace of summer. My joy was beyond measure because my summer was a time of exciting adventures that touched my heart. So greatly touched was I that when the season faded away I felt the inspiration to write the following poem.  (published in the Philippine Free Press on June 4,1969):

The lengthening shadows of summer

Reach out into my heart,

Soon shall come the showers,

The flight of birds and silent woods,

Shall mock the ghost of sunshine

And the claims of youth in the grass;

Loving and leaving: how strange, how sad,

How thin the line that marks

Our smiles from our sobs;

Each rainbow ride takes us to the mud.

Each love affair is farewell from the start,

Summer dies like a butterfly in the rain,

It won't be here again, not for us again. 

Summer also touches the soul. This is hardly surprising because as one savors the beauty of the season he cannot help but look deep into himself and discover the reality of his spirituality. Such discovery is expressed in the following poem (published in Kislap Graphic, May 27, 1964):

Summer is a swirl of many colors in the mind,

And in the heart a feeling undefined;

The sun stabs the soul with vague obsessions,

Not the beach which pulsates with youth

Like a woman's bosom,

Not the hillside with a vanishing trail,

But of something keenly needed yet unnamed;

Summer is a search into the caves of the self,

A painful gaze beyond the stars.

Summer and spirituality are not far apart. As one indulges in the colors of summer, such as the blush of sunrise and the reddish treat of sunset, his soul is inevitably stirred into awakening. For these wonders are beyond the capacity of man, and who else could fashion them but Almighty God?

God must have created summer for the young of hearts to enjoy. For the overflow of his goodness goes beyond giving them their daily bread. Man does not live by bread alone, says Jesus. That's why the Father built us a world, which is a “fairy land of exquisite beauty”, as one writer puts it.

Perhaps, it is not accidental that summer's May has become for Catholics, the month to honor the Mother of God through a daily “Flores de Mayo” where the sweetest of flowers are offered.

Perhaps too the Church wants to remind the youth that there is something far more beautiful than human love-- the love of the pure hearted like that of Mary of Nazareth.

Summer and youth? Yes, and spirituality too.