Some Morning Lines For This Old Village Poem by RIC BASTASA

At 5 in the morning
the bells toll the church
calls everyone to wake up and pray

you cannot just evade
a religious responsibility
upon a loud call

and then the women come out of the house
with their prayer books at hand
rushing to the tiled floors of
religion

when everyone is inside the walls
and when the bells stop tolling
when the windows are still closed
you begin to hear the
birds singing

fifteen minutes later
the early worms are ready for their pecking
and from a distance
you hear another call from nature
the sound of the sea breeze
the choir of the leaves of those
trees lining the old boulevard of
our broken dreams