2. Spratlys rain

                 By JC Nigado

          The rain starts soft and small

Drop by long drop they fall,

To ease the hard of day

Heavy with idle clouds at bay.

There’s nothing like waiting to work

Or working to wait, like a stork;

Days pass, the food disappears,

With nothing to fill the fears.

Then the steady flow turns sudden,

Falling flood, a Red ocean

Stern, direful, rampaging in the air,

In a world where nothing’s fair.

Who’ll stop the rain raging?

A faithless God pushing Beijing;

Who cries in the midnight rain

Must measure joy with pain.

Thunders roll power high,

As browbeat tears go by

Rocks of steel, vertical wind,

To whip, weaking a little friend.

Rain wakes random sleep

A Giant, a wimp in bed to keep,

Listening, feeling, unthinking

Stream thoughts of islands passing.

Or mountains of virgin memories,

When life was free, like diaries,

And then it grew weary, heavy,

Like an unwelcome rain – dreary, maybe.

For the nonce, deviating Donne

Man is an island, a shark?

The One Judgment has come

And it’s raining mean, after dark.

Rain drops like bombs of cloud,

Heralding dark threats, and loud!

Direct, determined, damned,

On the wretched ground building sand.

But the rain starts soft and small

Drop by fast drop they fall,

To cease the ravings of day,

Heavy with nimble clouds at bay.

Tagurabong City, Philippines