Filipinos

(Eds. note: This is the fourth post of four winners in the 2006 Kauai on My Mind Creative Competition. Each will post in successive days followed by the 14 runners up, so be sure to make daily visits to kauaibackstory.com.]

by Kimie Sadoyama

Filipinos
Hard working people
with rivers running down their faces
Skin so shiny
It holds the sun

And hands
Hands as twisted as the roots of the earth
Sobering in their powers
to predict the weather
plant their seeds

And even at the gambling tables
hidden from the law
their hands tell tales
Stories of Cockfights and poverty
Relatives in a foreign land
and nature in the raw

Days
Hard days
Days when men and women
cut nine foot sugarcane by hand

Long slashing caneknives
All hacking away at vast fields
Like ants at a raid

And the sweat that stung their eyes
and salted their lips was like a whip

So they did not even mind
the buzzing of mosquitos
'neath the halo of kerosene lamps
nor the squirming of children
all stuffed on one bed
like logs on a fire