Salt of the earth

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.




Poetry by Jose Winston Soldevilla
Read 654 times
Written on 2012-03-27 at 13:54

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