Iwahig Penal Farm Colony

Something brought back memories
Down large mudholes
Long strands of green
Ducks wobbling their feet on muck

Freedom is where there are no rails
And in shirts of orange, blue, and brown
They fill out the vast horizon
Where silence clips sounds

I watch tires make their marks
Leaving imprints on dirt
Where many names should have been called
For whom freedom's enfolding

I came out thinking

Is there freedom in them?
Who toil for a new shirt
a bar of soap, a milk powder pack
To induce sleep down a hammock?

I came out asking again

What is freedom
More than a softer bed,
A hot meal at day's end
and a loved-one looking from beyond?

Flashback

Wheels turn loose inside
they lead me back
cobbled streets, horsedrawn carriages
I was 20 at Fort Santiago
looking at a man
holding the reins

It was 10 years ago
many things happened
Nothing's changed
I think, I feel
Yet the same

Wheels grind stones
In my memory
They appear mighty
going on, going round
Never stopping

Wheels they remind me
Of a long lost folk song
"Wheels of fate"
Life is a wheel in fate

How can fate stay the same?

-Ava Villareal
November 23, 2008 (McDonald's SM City-Cebu)