04-13-2025, 05:42 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-16-2025, 01:20 PM by RiverNotch.)
What passes for a yard across this hill
is concrete and hibiscus, sometimes also
a dog or two chained up, a bowl for stray
cats by which all the local flocks have been
thinned---my mother remembers chico trees
teeming with colasisis, my grandmother
the skies nearly invisible, this hill
was jungle until Magellan, an orchard
until Marcos---what passes for a home
where everything's concrete and steel, the nearby
convent reduced to a hermitage, even
the megachurches sucking up its donors
reduced to rostra for various campaigning
cats, the children of colonizers, cops?
is concrete and hibiscus, sometimes also
a dog or two chained up, a bowl for stray
cats by which all the local flocks have been
thinned---my mother remembers chico trees
teeming with colasisis, my grandmother
the skies nearly invisible, this hill
was jungle until Magellan, an orchard
until Marcos---what passes for a home
where everything's concrete and steel, the nearby
convent reduced to a hermitage, even
the megachurches sucking up its donors
reduced to rostra for various campaigning
cats, the children of colonizers, cops?