To Yolanda

How easily the day begins.

I'm at a house, with a friend,

Listening to her lecture

About love

And understanding.

How quaint.

And as she laughs, I watch

Over her shoulder-

A tiny screen dominated

By a white gyre of soft clouds

Almost peaceful, yet

Coiling, churning,

Looming over a place so familiar

So familiar

But it's not the White House or Congress

Or Syria or Afghanistan

Or Hollywood or any of the other places

Where, we've been conditioned to think,

Everything of importance ever happens.

No, it's another world

It's the Philippines-

My heritage

My harbor

Mt people

Cornered and helpless in the lair of the beast.

But my host carries on, unminding,

Lamenting

About some actor or another, some scandal-

How tragic, she says.

How tragic indeed

As the man on the screen

Traces lines as a prophet would

He traces the future, on a map,

Directed by the moist ocean winds

And the waves

Apathetic, yet insistant he preaches

Statistics-

And numbers: four to ten thousand

But I can't comprehend what it means

While you sip your cold cola.

Cold, like the ice water in my veins

And the sweat forming on my brow

And the countless grey eyes of the world

Unseeing,

As you are.

To stress the imminence,

He taps the map with mild frevor.

"Doubtlessly there will be losses"-

He preaches numbers,

The tens and hundreds

His message blunted

By his remote expression.

"Death is assured."

And so he says it.

"People are going to die"

People are going to die!

Doubtlessly, certainly,

My people are going to die

And I

Can do nothing

But watch.

And after the storm,

He preaches again.

Four, then tenthousand.

Ten thousand, dead.

Sisters and mothers,

Daughters, more numbers

Not lives.

Not to you, not to you.

Feigning concern, she turns to me

Worried not of the tragedy

Just,

Not wanting to appear as a hypocrite.

How could you

Ever love

Ever understand

That which you do not know.

And all she could say was

"Oh"