the expectant calm of provincial daybreak
tricycles sputter in the distance,a ricefield wind rustlesthe greenveined mango leaves.
The ten thousand sounds of morning commence,the quiet temporizing of daybreak
as the orchestra of the world tests its strings.
cricketcall and birdsong -- the euphony of morning mingles with the roar of distant buses gathering dawn passengers for the metropolis,
bundled tingting scrape the ashen soil
all is fruiting cobwebbed dewdappled, leafcutter guyabano, ilang-ilang and santol, dust and decomposition
a heady rot thickens each lungful of the Central Luzon morning.
the vast heaving breath of this rural world conspires still to a cyclic conformity of lives measured by inundation and harvest
a faint quickening at its center an increasingly audible rasp at its fringes are muffled still by the timelessness that hangs over the town
like an immense blanket.
The pastel sky widens
the sounds of the marketplace swell. A chatter of Ilocano Pampango Pangasinan Tagalog English freely mingling in the tones of rural commerce
in the solicitation of vendors and the laughing, haggling lifestruggle over peso and kiloweight
