Erlie Lopez

  An afternoon of rain over clusters of trees with leaves and flowers peeling off from the boughs to the grassy ground: how it wafts a smell not earthy but sweet, even sacred – the incense of benediction the candle…

Taunting a summer clinging to its fiery sun a thunderstorm explodes one after the other on a tin roof and I am caught between rolling the blanket early and making a pot of tea. Tea wins as I am then,…

Earth Day poem #2     Before the old streetsweeper comes I take a lingering look at the leaves now burnt brown crusty and curled on their new concrete bed down their original home still standing up to the clearing…

Earth Day poem #1     This morning, I picked flowers on the wayside as the sun tarried with its light, pinched off a stem with orange blooms just dotting palm-sized leaves, then a solitary hibiscus queenly in yellow and…

Article II, Section 6 of the Philippine Constitution states that the separation of the Church and State is inviolable. The principle first appeared in the Malolos Constitution of 1899 which was later on sustained in several amendments. Framers must have…

Pink, whether it is a fashion color for women that bloomed in Europe in the 1700s or a health color for the breast cancer awareness campaign throughout October (from 1985 in the United States till it became international), it largely…

It’s now officially presidential election season in the Philippines with the filing of the certificate of candidacy done October 1-8, candidate substitution allowed till November 15, and nationwide voting on May 9, 2022 (the second Monday of May, every six…

Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III, 15th president of the Philippines (2010-2016), may be said to have entered Philippine politics through doors opened accidentally by iconic parents – the assassinated democratic champion during the martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos and…

FEATURE         All it took was one cart on a sidewalk filled with vegetables, fruits, rice, eggs, canned food, and other stuff to prevent or fight the onslaught of covid-19. And the scribbled message in Pilipino on…

FEATURE         Thirteen months after the Covid-19 outbreak in the Philippines and as cases surged, a new kind of morning greeted a middle-class neighborhood in Teachers Village, Quezon City that April 14 which pleasantly surprised a mix…