Coming Home to Bohol

Such a return is highlighted in Marjorie Evasco’s ‘It Is Time to Come Home,’ also the title of her 2023 book of new and collection poems. Evasco is a Filipina poet writing in English and her mother tongue, Binisaya (Boholano-Visayan).

‘It is Time to Come Home’ is a poem with a theme of voyaging – not necessarily a journey across the ocean, but a quiet navigation along the Abatan River in the western part of Bohol, an island province in the Visayas. This is a freeverse poem in English, consisting of six stanzas, each punctuated by an indented line. The persona speaks in the third person, observing the dramatic situation: a boatman is departing from Postan Gamay, where there are many mangroves. The setting is an estuary, where the saltwater of the sea and the freshwater of the river mix, marking the end of the vast ocean and the beginning of the river’s narrow stretch.

He has just paddled the banca out of Postan Gamay,
where the branches of the mangrove arch above the water
a temple of dark green silence.
					In his heart he keeps the oars quiet.

This moment of silence and tenderness in the first stanza is ‘Delivered back to the light and sound of the world,’ as if paying respect to the environment. It further depicts the relationship between the boatman and nature, particularly his sighting of ‘wild emerald doves’ and ‘orioles,’ described in all their glory: ‘dipping their wings for a bath and sunning on a wire.’

As an ecopoem, it compares humans and non-humans without placing either on a higher level, emphasising that both are integral parts of the Abatan River. Both the boatman and the birds end their day – the boatman is heading home, and the birds appear to be cleansing themselves as the sun sets. The river is a conduit of life, flowing from the ocean, which provides the boatman (and his community) with sustenance to the river, home to mangroves, doves, and orioles.

The poem also highlights the significance of indigenous knowledge, or ‘folk wisdom,’ as discussed by Rina Garcia Chua in the preface of Sustaining the Archipelago. Returning to indigenous knowledge can remind us of how the native Filipinos once preserved their environment before the advent of technology (Chua xxxvi).

One local lore tells the story of a bell hidden in the depths of the Abatan River, a story that comes from the Eskaya community of Bohol. In Evasco’s retelling, the bell was thrown by the people of Malabago ‘to defy anger of shamans and priests, and greed of marauders.’ The indented verse goes on to say: ‘No one owns the bell but the river.’

Lost-bell narratives are fairly common in Philippine oral literature. A 2016 essay titled ‘Excavating a Hidden Bell Story from the Philippines: A Revised Narrative of Cultural Linguistic Loss and Recuperation’ surveys the many lost-treasures stories in the country, particularly tales of church bells hidden by locals to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Often, the bell is unreachable even to its rightful owners. The paper argues two things: one, that this may be about lamenting the loss of resources, which is common in a colonised country, and two, ‘a way of accounting for a perceived cultural deficit in terms of intangible heritage’ (Kelly 97), a long-standing effect of colonisation.

Another myth depicted in Evasco’s poem is the belief of the people of Bohol in the guardian of the river, Cogtong, who ensures the preservation of the mangroves and doves. Even the fishing method, hook-and-line fishing, is practiced with the awareness that Cogtong should not be disturbed or caught; the children of Abatan even laugh at the idea of catching the river’s guardian.

Evasco’s ‘It Is Time to Come Home’ not only speaks of a literal homecoming or a signifier of the end of day, but also of returning to stories and traditions of the home of our ancestors. It also speaks volumes of how the author, as she wrote in the book’s preface, ‘retraces [her] path back to Bohol’ having lived in Tacloban, Dumaguete, Mandaluyong, and ‘other elsewheres’ by way of her other projects with fellow Boholano writers and artists.