The Isles of Summer

(Published in the Regional Weekly Digest, March 2, 2008
Legazpi City, Philippines)

Tiny jewels below the red dragon’s shadow
Sparkle gone and shelled in a burrow
Countless souls in the lioness’ jaws caught
In reckless greed for a gathering going naught

Long shores of the kingdom blackened with muck
Adding foliage to vile deeds that each time struck
Then voices wail in the mute of the night
For fallen kin and the right to fight

Dark crimson drapes long hills and mountains
As the ground bleeds the assembly talk behind curtains
Atoms disperse where merchants meet
Shaking and sweeping the earth from its feet

Projectiles whose objectives cannot be achieved
Turn loyal knights from what they first believed
When lords of light with the dark dances
The adversary from both flanks pounces

While obscurity and absurdity haunts the head
Young hunger twinges for books and for bread
Then sages cannot discern night from day
The flowery leaves their wisdom sway

While chains unbounded is dreamt in the end
The eagle’s talons they can never bend
Its king with a hatchet has a firm resolve
In his hand the world must revolve

Again the endless path of time comes across sorrow
Hearts and minds decide if it will be till tomorrow
While down in the quagmire of filth and pain
The feeble suffer and the royalty gain

A long coveted treasure lies missing in the isles of summer
Precious pieces of gold, diamonds and silver
Hopeful brown men cannot lose it forever
Maybe it can still be found… maybe never.