Prize Winning Poem - Tribal Pride (United States) Poem by john tiong chunghoo

Tribal Pride
The bulldozers went rumbling through
Our land, ancestral resting places, and
The last vestige of our survival:
The forest, the trees that had
Given us our shelters, our food,
And our only links to our ancestors.
Every tree that we knew like a friend
Next to our house had been victim
To the chainsaw since the lumbering started.
Our land cries out and our rivers,
Red with decayed roots, rotting barks,
And saw dust, signify our blood
Boiling inside us, chiding
Us to reverse our fate.
The world has turned upside down.
We have nearly lost the will to live
As they laid bare our land,
Taking away with it our pride,
Romances, dreams, and soul.