In the one room shack
They family lived and salvaged
What they could find in the secondary forests
Every week mother and son gone
Knowing life could be hard
Walking to collect rubber woods
In the secondary forests
With nature life seemed peaceful
The flowing stream of clean water
The mother and son drunk with The Lord
Believing the garden of green....
The angels lived watching us
The world moved
For the boy he was in his garden
Of nature and butterflies
Stories of snakes sneaking far behind
The villagers lived day to day
Some struggled others found their way
In festivals and marriages
They celebrated with joyous glow
In the one room shack
They family lived and salvaged
They counted the days they would leave
The nest and challenged themselves
The boy learned the hardship
So were his siblings learning to cope with lives
The roots they planted learning curve of life
It couldn't be that way as long as one wanted change
In the one room shack
Life was peaceful simple living ways
Cutting woods rearing poultry
The family lived through the years
And God always there
Watching mapping the progress
Don't for a minute you think God forget
God always never let you down
Luxuries couldn't be found
Life was simple needs were survival
Clothes were manageable
Passing the day hoping to be uplifted
And life gone without much interruptions
The daily chores picking up leftovers...
The simple games he found to his pleasures
He hardly knew about colors and religious opinion
The games in the village
He participated with glee in his eyes
Winning the encounters in most games
The age group children scared of playing with him
In time the games progresses
With money for the exchanges
For the loses they had to buy
He collected quite a lot in the games
The festive religious gateways
The whole villagers of the same faith gathered
Watching the antics of the mediums
They came from outside the village
Even outsiders came to pray
Offering alms asking for good health and wealth
Sometimes he helped out to get some free coins
Sometimes he got free meals and drinks as well
No parent would be worry
The children and teenagers could be found
Hanging around food and drinks
Sometimes watching the opera show
At these festive religious celebrations
Stalls were set up food plenty could be bought
The business flourished for the hawkers
For people came to watch the opera show
The teenager watched
Dreaming of the day he could be there
On the stage entertaining the crowd
He thought it was a good try
Years came quickly
Developments broke the routines
People moved friends all disappeared
The young adult left too knew it was time
The villagers realized
Developments meant uplifting them
The places they called home would be gone
They waved each other goodbye
The secondary forests the boy remembered
The highway project took it away
Now it is a long stretch of highway
His footprints were gone with the wind
He remembered the coolness
The stream of water fresh to taste
The quiet natural surrounding
Maybe only snakes to keep company
He saw the one room shack
For a while the neighbor's house mingled as one
The planks were removed extra rooms could be found
For a couple of months the family could taste the luxuries
All the small tokens of goodness
It had to end soon enough.....
The quit notice came
The villagers of the last moved away
The echoes of those years
Now the later part of his life
He could recall with certain flashes
Of those times playing with his friends
Now as he as sit and watches the sights
Of the years he had come to many spots
The family had broken up into lives of its own
Each to make the book of history of each life
He flicked through his memories
He remembered the fighting spiders
During his time it was a popular spot
Every young teenager gone out to find
They wanted to be the king
The white face spiders they caught
Around secondary forest and foothills
Alone or in group they went hunting
About danger they forgot
The game of spiders fighting was one
After school it was the fighting game
The white spiders ruled in their eyes
In school holidays
Volunteered as lorry attendant
In his uncle's lorry carrying cow dung
To the Indian estates
He could imagine the wind
Brushing on his face....
Away from the village
Going to somebody's place
The Indian estates
Full of families
They lived there working
Life outside the estate only on festive seasons
Unloaded the cow dung
Got some free water to quench thirst
Then it was back to clean up the stinky cow dung
It was a reprieve from the daily chores in the village
He saw the reality
The scenes got him unaware
Now he realized life was easy
One had to work hard to make it
Amongst his village friends
Some went to the dark lane
In time they were caught put in prison
They had tales to tell
They said it was good in the beginning
The easy money and the enjoyment could be found
For they said it was short way to seek happiness
It wasn't a good way to make a living
The time changed
The friends all gone
New ones came but stay a distance
For the roots weren't the same
The new hope stripped naked of its secondary forest
He found his new hunting ground totally out of town
It was about 5km away from his former village
In the town so easy to see things at night
So it was he stayed
The family progressed
The siblings grew up
Things looked better
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