There is no fish in the market of Cuyo town’s población,
a few steps away from the main pier and Capusan beach
from which you can walk on, along the miles-long sand
one can see how there are no clams or crabs or much life
in these warmed waters around the forty-six Palawan islands
straddling the Sulu Sea, bridging the province to the rest
of the Philippines, a country with coasts sinking steadily
as men force into being unnatural lands by the sea.

New islands are being birthed here, born from
the water and its waves, dead corals cut into pieces
marooned by rocks which cradle them and fishermen
who lay there to rest after battling the elements
for a single maya-maya that cannot feed them nor
their families who live in a community where prices
are twice that of anywhere and supplies only
come once a week, if the weather permits
human life to continue on a dying ecosystem
caused not by their hands nor anyone they know.

For so long it was said that these islands were
protected by God and knew not of drought,
they knew not of storms or what goes beyond
their world at the mercy of gods they cannot see,
fellow men and women elsewhere on this earth
god-like in the sense that all they left for these
thousands on a dot in a far-flung corner of a map
is a single fish for sharing among many who are less
based on some metric not among those listed
as beneficiaries as they burn for light and power
to be sent again elsewhere in this world.