One of the men lifted his head

and looked at me

as we sloped past the ash fields,

and rows of toilers

like grey bamboo canes

if bamboo was stooped and bent

with brittle hands knuckle white

against the plastic handled hoes.

 

Her hands, smaller, firmer, sure,

came down on my shoulders

shadowed his face with fear.

 

An explanation in a classroom

pretending it isn’t an excuse

claims to be progress,

claims to be a new world

built on the broken bones

of the last.

 

Mothers scream during childbirth.

There is blood and pain

and sometimes

death.

 

We are lucky we are not all toiling.

If the old world had their way

who knows what would have happened?

We are smarter these days

we can laugh at the facts

that shattered when the world changed.

 

Who know what will happen

at the next night rise.