Everybody rushed out
to see the full sun - eclipse
I could not go
because my eyes were too busy
reading your letter
where my mother had taken him food
that night
years after
I saw the leaf plate
nestled in the hedge of words
spoken by my mother
and his octogenarian mother together
on the face of the moon-
making history

Mother

The moon beams struck hard
the bamboo hedge
that night
when my mother took food
tucked under apron
that smelt of
the morning I was born ,
for the man
fighting for democracy
wanted by police for
a long jail sentence
in a moonless chamber
Years after
he chose to die
under the moon
than starve
without it
The moon struck hard
the rock and dale
that night
when his own mother
shook the earth
where her only child
wrote the tumults of history
in a corner without tears
Years after
the moon descended
in a leaf plate
left in the bamboo hedge