Babloo's Song Poem by Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot

I am weary from having seen too much
Of what I have already seen
Shovels and trucks stripping away the remaining earth
On the lands of my people,
And of kith and kin in other corners of the planet
The evil of the thunder from bombs
Shredding dreams into fragments of themselves
The hunger that pushed babies from cribs
To the rocky battlefields
The rapes that drove my sisters and mothers
To strip their clothes and unleash the rage
Killing their souls

I maroon my tired body in a soft bed
Willing for sleep, like petals on a flower
Undisturbed by frost or thorns
And I am so far away from home
I stare at the darkness, my only friend at night
The scent of Baguio pine penetrates my nose
From somewhere a band of crickets cheep

For a moment, I forget
The repulsive reek of death
The probing wails of hunger
I stop chasing the currents of violence
I stop twirling the wheels of resistance
I stop disentangling the knots in the laws
I stop solving the riddles in my people’s fate

I look for beauty in the dark
It comes to me
In the shape of a crescent moon
Struggling for its full shape
Peeping shyly though the flimsy curtain
I follow its dream and it leads me
To the coming days
When I will sojourn back to your lap
And feel the warmth of the cotton sari
That covers your sweet, lithe body
I long to run my fingers through your smooth hair
Embrace you, kiss you and pause only
To listen to the patter of tiny feet on the floor
(Did the baby ask about me today?)

All the madness
Fades into nothingness
When you invade the pith of my thoughts

I long for my wings to grow
I cannot wait
To take that plane ride
Back home.