Goodness sake, am finding myself multi-tasking again: changing my mind on what to include in the book, publisher inquiring if I have finished it, revising no end and (time is running out), Ateneo's Karina asking for WDN's mss., dealing with an avalanche of mail, jittery about our Purisima youngsters' speeches for the Ring Ceremony this weekend, property tax to pay, car registration, HOA raising monthly assessment (group demanding protest that I will just have to let go)---challenges never end. But that's probably what keep us going.

Desert Wind

Found in My Treasure Trove of Poems

1                                           DESERT  WIND      

 Time was when I sucked victuals of my 

   rain forest; a garland of bounty festooned 

  my tree of life. Scent that blew garden   

  fresh: how it renewed the pallid blood,

  the sagging flesh! Such splashes of colors 

  to grace the meadow of my heart: 

  my soul brimmed with fibers, manna.

  But the wind struck: oh such fiendish 

  sweep that devoured all, all that I fed on: 

  the habitat of my ancestors, mirrors of 

  my past, the greenness of my universe.

  Now its silence turns into searing scourge

  that shrivels the spring of my dreams 

  and crumples the core of my soul.

  

   Sun of man, why do you burn my being? 

   The grass curdled into brown, children hide.

   Dry is my sea of lore, 

   Shredded the tapestry of my life.

   You leave me with nothing, nothing,

   not even the remains of the night 

   to lull me in the arms of Morpheus.

                            By  Blanca Datuin

(Revised March, 2010.  Originally published 2008 in the Iowa Daily Palette, online publication of the University of Iowa)