Lament

I will tell my heart to change lodgings” ~ D. Bonta

Nothing in the world stays still.
Nothing in the world moves fast enough.
All night the lights from passing cars arc across house windows.
The girl with a limp who sells hot peanuts at the end of the road
has gone to sleep. Her mother is playing cards with a vengeance
to win back a debt from the neighbor. The older sister
whose husband perished in the January ambush in Maguindanao
is nursing a teething baby. When the soldiers take off
their fatigues, shine their shoes, clean their guns,
many of them look so young, like boys. My journalist friend
abducted more than seven years ago near the bread store
and the elementary school is still missing. On Sundays,
with other women volunteers my other friend boils yams
in iron cauldrons to feed hundreds of children
displaced from their communities by all this fighting.
From rainforests, under cover of night, loggers
take down old wood, mahogany, pine wood, heartwood—
what will they make: furniture? church doors? coffins?
Nothing in the world stays still.
Nothing in the world moves fast enough.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Jing Ting Mountain.

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