Salt Of The Earth Poem by Winston Soldevilla

I was born on a stormy Wednesday night
While my papa was playing his old worn guitar,
In the gleam of a flickering kerosene lamp
while a typhoon was howling from somewhere afar.
My papa was jobless. My mama was sick.
I was their eleventh offspring, a question of fate.
We ate cold and scrapped food each day of the week,
And we drank of the waters of love and pure hate.
One day I found papa, up, hanging dead.
And my mama was bleeding, our radio was gone.
My sisters were bloody and under the bed.
My brothers were slaughtered and I was alone.
I remembered papa saying, “We are the salt of the earth. “
and mama would reply back, “By virtue of birth.”
Oh GOD, I was lonely ‘till I met my girl,
and together we tried to rebuild our lives.
Years passed by, in challenges and in failures,
until the world paused and look at me, one who arrived.
I remembered papa saying, “We are the salt of the earth. “
and I answered him back smiling, “By virtue of birth.”
There lines in our hands of our fate so they say.
But I know that a man is the master of all;
For he makes his own footsteps,
His night or his day
And he wishes his rising and causes his fall.