Sung and homaged it rises full to a sky of whipped lace
and floats across the shudder of peaks above the valley
where Pulangui catches the fingers of silent rivulets,
dreamings in dance and weave, rhythms lived in tales.

Kitanlad's head is in the skyworld, her feet touching earth,
her hair caught somewhere in the region of night clouds.
She hoists full sail her spirit across a sea of stars while
planetary shadows rise below, and clash in every hamlet.

Moonfire spreads through the mat of Bukidnon's night,
bathes the sullen tops, calls forth music of brass and bamboo
offered by the fevered hills. On the grass of a corralled ranch,
ghost mare shakes its mane, stomps its presence on the land.

Somewhere, an heirloom slips from a dead hand. A spear
is broken. A boss of gong is smashed for all time, and documents
litter the gravemarkers. Metal glints, then is gone, or hidden.
Cicadas chirr, owls hoot, tongues of flame tremble on their wicks.

There is open war between black gossamer and silver spears
of a moon in filigree. There is the wind, universal, claiming
the wilds, and then it comes: short-lived lightning, a hushed rain
at midnight, while sunflowers droop in almost a sleep of death.

Ascend the plateau for scent of pines: the repose is beyond belief.
The land slopes up in prayer to the mountains ruled by Kitanlad,
as though this power could defend the mass of trees in redoubt of mist,
as though the natives were not gathered round troubled campfires

of their burnt-out villages. They mourn the coming end of trees,
the shrouding of the valley, as they unsheathe the blade of dreams
remembering that ritual is a way of life, a memory of how it is to die,
like leaves upon the earth, their humus seeding the life to come.

There is a full moon, too, over the mill. Stacks loom over the fields
where cane trucks march on a dust-fed day. Yesterday, at noon,
two child cutters breathed the light brown cloud and squinted at
the midday haze. They held leaves, bright green and razor-sharp.

Upon this land of parched soil and full moons, there was a dialogue
among the furrows. How much longer? a woman keened-our skin
has peeled during our watch-and while the laughter was with rage,
the stalks have withered on the field, the graves have multiplied.

A village spoke the word. It bore the countersigns of ancestors
as it crossed gullies and banks. There will be scarves upon the stalks,
embroidered with tillers' oaths to the kind moon of their tribes
while the patient gods on Kitanlad watch, awaiting chants of old.

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