It seems like something appropriate to share on a Good Friday – how hope, light, love and life can spring up from the most unpromising of circumstances. 

But this is my lived experience.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s yours too.

Here’s a personal story in the shape of a poem:

MANILA                   

Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger

• ‘Lost’, David Wagoner

Daybreak dog walking, looking down from the hills

Seen from safe distance, a sight overwhelming

Rising out of the hollows of hell’s grey haze:

A scene from Inception, concertina-like folds.

Would not this Here the bravest heart heave?

Then morning commute, caught in the maze

Of your internal organs, interminable traffic,

Bumper-to-bumper, brain be-numbing.

But worst is the poverty plait through your pavements,

And shrill is the contrast cursing your landscape:

Fortified mansions, megalithic malls

Luxury outnumbered by beggars and shacks.

Stark city apathy searing our souls.

You’ve borne the brunt, colonizers’ brutal obsession

For greed and for glory, for riches ungranted.

Now local officials are your leering oppressors,

They the heirs of corruption kindling chaos and need,

Siphoning government goods for personal gain,

Bribing policemen 

For blindness or blood.

Strangely I find my heart hopeful on the homeward commute,

Though the traffic is worse as we wind through your streets.

Recalling their faces, effervescence of beauty,

Of youth unrestrained, uncontaminated, untainted.

Ignited to learn, they dream unalarmed,

Cleaving to schoolbags, defining coolness and courage,

Education’s a treasure, they tell us, together

We’ll fight for a freedom, a future without cycles

Of poverty with parents unempowered and enslaved.

Maynila, you bore from womb’s darkness these brilliant babies.

Do not dare to betray them or take them for granted,

They will be your salvation, my salvation included

Now I know it’s these children, not your jungle of concrete,

They the powerful stranger disguised in school uniforms,

As in Wagoner’s wisdom, 

I’m no longer lost in the woods.

From poetry collection ‘Dear Planet’, published by Fidessa Literary, July 2025.