“The Philippines – Marikina City residents on Friday tried to salvage what is left of their homes after severe floods

spawned by Typhoon Ulysses subsided, sifting through mud-caked appliances and cars.”  (Reportr.world)
Shirts we’ve long grown out of. That

first radio my father brought home

one rainy evening. Broken mobile phones

kept in the drawer. Or a crumbling photo

from a high-school class pictorial. We hoard 
these commotions and bring in new ones

to push back the dark. If the clouds can

be pocketed we all would, the sky ransacked

to an empty blue, the rain relenting

for a moment to allow us to clear the mud.
When all’s said and done, what to some

may be trash, to most are just things:

pure, simple things they own, that they’ve

got. Just like our hands before we invented

fire. A latch, a knob, a frame from a neighbor’s

window in the caking murk. The Turk writer 
Mehmet Murat Ildan said we must go visit

castles in the fog because they hold

the extraordinary dreams. It’s true: we all

enter old places in our waking. But here

it’s often either to start sweeping the ground

or to run up to the topmost floor.