From the Birth of the Mountains to Extinction
St. Louis, MO
2025, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Dear my good friends, the anito;
Forgive mankind
For we have played the force of nature
Taunted it with our shallow urban desires
And set it for extinction
Forgive us, anito, I dare you
Dare you to forget the ground that built our civilization
The rivers that lent their water,
The birds that taught us how to sing
Just like we have forgotten
Forget your Mother Nature, anito, forget like we have
Like we have burned the layers of this sheltering sky
Just to profit from our superficial industries
And viciously steal from Earth her lover, the ocean
Under the narcissistic faith we would have no consequence
Tell me, anito, do you believe in consequence?
Because I know I do
I feel it in the heat of the breeze, simoy
And the anguish of our araw, that blazing sun
I see it in the burden we set upon our ocean, karagatan
And the rage of her tears as they run to the shore
I hear it in the cold death rattle of extinction
And taste it, the disease of the Earth we so selfishly inflicted
But, I ask so desperately once again, dear anito,
Forgive mankind
Because where there is a storm, there is peace to calm it
From the glory praise my Filipino ancestors sang to you a thousand years ago
To the protests of the new generation, grasping at those final breaths of the Earth
From the birth of the mountains to extinction
Forgive, and do not forget, mankind
Just like we have not
Forgotten
You
Reflection
The anito are said to be ancient Filipino deities of nature. As a Filipino-American who has always longed to be in touch with her culture, I have always felt a connection with them when being in nature. Just a few weeks ago, in my home of St. Louis, Missouri, we experienced one of the most devastating tornadoes in our city’s history; with stories all over the national news, sprawls of destruction across my hometown, and many labeling the disaster as an evident result of climate change, I felt, more than ever before, the strong desire to send a long, heartfelt apology note to nature, the anito, in the hopes that my message would reach not only them but the people all over the world who are just as affected by the horrors of climate change as me and many others.