by Generoso Opulencia (Poetry)

They sup the sun.
Their streams flow
cubits up the sky
through trunks, twigs
and foliage
to nourish and heal
by their essences
our infirmities. So long as
there are rainforests
to ax and to hack,
this our earth
need not
self-destroy,
I,
a botanist
from the north,
have been commissioned
in this forest
deep in Mindanao,
to have
all of them
felled
dismembered
on behalf
of the hungry maws
of progress.
I am casting my suicidal cloak
in the presence of my enemies.