A mother’s love survives

Clutching the bundled rag
her scrawny fingers
conduct her tenderness
to a spare little baby in her arms,
asleep and secured,
unacquainted with the swirl of chaos
the crunch of urban poverty:
a mother’s love survives
the loss of human dignity.

Under the Jones Bridge
along the River Pasig;
their huddled class watched
the parade of pricey cars
dripping wet in the rain,
splashing the puddles as they go by,
not noticing, not knowing,
the hunger nor the pain
of a disenfranchised
mother and child.