TO THE SLEEPING LADY

By Romeo Balingcongan

I wonder
If you have always been sleeping all these years?
Was there ever a time when you lay prone on your tummy

Your face held by both your hands propped against your chin

Watching the people of the lake

Do what they normally do each day

Housewives and other female household members

Washing clothes at the lakeshore or 

Agus River or other outlets from the lake.

Farmers bringing vegetables, fruits,

Marang, durian, or whatever produce they had

Fishermen their catches for the day

Vendors selling their wares in Padian

Malongs and straw mats and blankets

Woven the traditional way

Buyers haggling for lower prices

Horse driven carts then

Jeepneys and motorcabs now

Plying their routes

Private vehicles going to wherever they're going to

At arranged weddings and aqeeqas?
Smiling perhaps at the little foibles of the people of the lake?
Were you sad

At the occasional Meranaw custom of vendetta

Rido, they call it, that disturbed

The normal flow of life for the families involved?
Did you cry

When wars plagued the land

Resisting invaders from foreign lands?
And did you shed tears

As you watched Marawi bombed

Reduced to rubbles

The chaotic din of everyday life

Silenced?
Are you mourning still

The lives that were lost

In that senseless war

And the souls that were scattered

To who knows where?
Do nightmares disturb you

Of terrible things yet to come

When, God forbid,

All the pent up rage are not contained

When blood shall be spilt and turn the land crimson?
Or, do you, with the wisdom born

Of thousands and thousands of years

Who lived long before the first settlers set their feet upon the land

See beyond our ken a brighter joyous day

When the People of the Tents

Come home and be once more the proud

People of the Lake?
Pray tell me, Sleeping Lady

For my soul is faint

My heart heavy.
Tell me please.