AS MORNING BREAKS

 

The morning is breaking softly today. The wet blades of grasses mirror the morning light in mythical symmetry. Some roosters still perching on their Indian Mango roost welcome it in solfeggio intervals. The brood of chicks plea on their mothers to hasten their morning rituals to hunt for some prospective worms. A couple of snipes inspect the drying stream winding through the orchard and down into the culverts set up by DPWH. It follows them across the Aklan East Road to join the greater water of the Jal-o yonder several communities in rural Balete. The lanzones and mangosteens spread their leaves quietly exposing proudly the ripening of their abundant fruits. On their branches black ants are already queueing in their endless lines as if they have not taken a respite.

The morning is breaking sweetly today. My wife’s brew is already steaming, a weft of bitter aromatics escapes into the fresh air and mingles with the sweet scent of a ripening eangka. The coffee! My morning ritual. A candle is lit, its flame dancing silently as if a laud, its whitish smoke raising the sigh of praise and longing around the altar in our living room.

The morning is breaking. Vehicles zoom fast the road outside in different directions. People are rushing it for their worries and concerns. The net is buzzing. The radios break in angst.  All are up and about.

All save for one.

In her bed, a barangay official refuses to welcome the day. She puts her pillow over her head. The night had been restless. Morpheus failed again to lull her to slumber. In her mind, no sheep are jumping over some fence. In its stead, a list of names keeps appearing as if phantom haunting her over and over again.

The list. That robbed her of her rest. It was not a very long one. Nor it was a very short one. Nothing special about it. But something in it deprived her of her sleep.  Names she knows quite well. It was like any other, a simple list of names. Names everyone in the small neighborhood know. Names of people whose roofs displays no stars and whose house stands on owned lots. Names of people whose parents get invited in social events and whose family names carry weights in a community that give due regards to men of consequences.

The list is for indigent beneficiaries. And they are there. All of them.