Too Late

For J

Too late for brilliant hues on spring florets,
But not for mottled shades and weathered browns.
Too late for splendid sun through redwood crowns,
But not for dusky dreamy silhouettes.
Too late to watch the creek cascading free,
But not to hear its tinkled lullabies.
Too late to wander in your lush green eyes,
But not to feel your moonlit gaze on me.

Too late to have the film replay, but not
The strains of Yesterday. I watched you bow
Your violin and tried to make my chords
Fit in – and did, at why she had to go…
Too late to long for missed adventures, but
Not too late for more, for now I know
                                                                         you.

Yosemite

For S

I.

I fell in love with her summertime;
the falls reflecting her sunny
disposition, flowing long
shiny locks that cusped her ears and
cascaded
down
the granite grey she dependably wore.

I trod unshod,
my feet a pair of naked hands rustling
lightly through meadowed brows
to the hearthen glow of sun-fired banks
where I stopped and gazed, longing,
into two deep pools –
windows to her soul,
mirrors unto mine.

I saw her face in a raven’s eyes,
a marmot’s nose and
a buck’s teeth, but longer
lasting still were a   
bear-cub’s courage,
an owl’s philosophy,
and a hardy coyote.

I found shade under a lodgepole, reading
folklore in old scaly bark
and thin prophecies in the leaves
while, weary from my longest
journey, I drank, from the cup of
her hands reached out to me,
clear Sierra snowmelt.

I longed
always to be with her.


II.

She was called Ahwahnee –   
big mouth of a bear, lined with
glistening enamel, threatening
to swallow me whole, then spit me
out where I belong.

She spoke with the softness of falling snowflakes,
dusting the slopes with her gentle words
of caution, that piled into foreboding
heaps unheeded, so
ignorant was I.

I fell knee-deep in her wintertime,
my feet a pair of gloved hands shivering,
pressed against her frosted cheek;
the campfire smouldered on her iced resolve,
the earthworms died in that frozen earth.

She had stayed in her element
when I heard the break, perched
high on a ledge on the opposing wall,
as I watched her avalanche
once more, swirling helices entwined
by common destiny spiralling
down the sides of her face,
slipping, sliding to land
with such considered force that
no-one noticed but I.

She stood distant still, clad
in familiar granite grey,
firm, thoughtful and
serene.

Haight Street Dance

For K

Two autumn sparrows
flying home in shadow to
peck at leftovers.

Birthday Letter

For T

On my birthday last year, you taught me
To sew. I held the needle, tentative
As those first touches between
Fingertip and fingertip.

You guided my unsubtle hands
Thread by thread, stitch by stitch.
Always, you followed my pattern
For I would have no other.

When you let me on my own
I would slip again and prick myself
But no more than your conscience –
You would rather fault your teaching.

I could never be wrong
And when you wove your own, I wept
And threatened with scissors in hand
The lovely work your hand had made.

It was a back-stitch, tighter
Than all my half-hearted creation.
You wept as you picked apart the seams
So delicate I could not see.

Now my needle breaks whenever I try,
And yet I press on my own way, forgetting
That you are still there
Quietly holding my bloodied hands.

The Love Song of an Itinerant Crustacean

Apologies to Mr T.S. Eliot

From fairer shores her breath begins to tease
And fresh against my shell her frost-cloud thaws;
Though straight to sheltered holes my instinct draws,
Storms broil beyond the skies a crab’s eye sees.
She swoops to conquer bays upon the breeze,
To lift, unclasp my joints in smooth gull-jaws –
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

But left I am to take the other part,
To dance unarmed on salt-parched planks of wood,
To gurgle, burble, jump up with a start,
To fear the depths and seek her turbid mood.
If I could love the sea with truer heart!
I felt hers beating; have I understood?

Leech

Nature conceived
The ultimate monster. She bestowed
Four eyes
Five heads
Six mouths less than a hydra
– Tossed in an ovary and
Multiple testes to prove Her point –
And an unassuming name:
Pacat.

Pacat.
Naked heels on decaying leaf
Litter. Little hollow stomachs
Echo the dinner bell.
Dancing shadows
Shadowed by swarms dancing
Beneath the shadows.

Pacat, pacat.
The cries of local children prompt
A frenzied head-to-toe.
There,
The fine, mud-speckled strand of –
Ouch, you little **** –
What do you mean there’s no more 风油?

Pacat! Pacat! Pacat!
Pudgy and turgid,
Rock on rock leave it undisjointed – jumps
Onto the hand that beats it (that now
Feeds it), zippered fast by jawless teeth.
Scorched from skin in a naphtha blaze, it
Vomits a stream of bloody profanity.
Leech languishes, limp, lifeless.

But
Having had a day’s respite
Since the slaying of the leech
I scratch an itch that must be
Scratched, only to find its
Rosy-cheeked Hirudin smile silently drooling away.

Planting Mangroves

The cangkul reared its rough round head,
A rusty half-moon hovering above,
Drawing in the rising tide, ready
To come crashing down upon the flats
Slashing through the salt-crust skin
Shredding ancient dendrite forms
To gouge out earthy flesh beneath.
Mud-stained fluid transfused the air,
Draining into the fresh-made gash.

Then, the night-soil retaining pit
Crumbled inward plop by splotch, so
That with a fearful flush it overran
Our previous, hard-wrought
Digging.

We were always too slow,
Too clumsy in the afternoon viscosity –
That sticky huddle of sweat and swelter –
Standing dank and foul with solid purpose,
Poised to strike with tools raised high
Only to hear drip, drip, dripping
Splat down upon us as fellow planters
Parted the visceral land to send
More mud spurting with each stroke.
Soon, the beachhead was a
Trench crew’s work in progress.

We coddled the saplings,
Easing them gently back into the earth
Lest we broke the fecund amnions
That swaddled their baby-bottoms –
Those had but five minutes

To live. Arms thrust elbow-deep, we
Patched the wounds with gloved hands,
Grafted the swarthy layer back on,
Smoothed the wrinkles, stroked the scars,
Emerged, mud-soiled, from reclaimed land and

Found ourselves on a soggy patch
Deep in mangrove forest.

Elephant Pool

It was something we would never forget,
Squashed snug into the warm, dry spot
In three steps: Roll aside; let the newcomer in; roll back.

This was our rainforest resort,
Our shady canopy, our bathing pool,
Our sunning rock that might someday turn to sand.

The gravelly granite greyed our hides
And evenly heated our stretched-out trunks
As the air shimmered all over us.

We watched as the river rushed eagerly by,
Throwing frogs, bugs and other unwelcome guests
Out, over the falls and far away.

We were lulled thus into estivation
Which dulled our senses to the glowering sun
And the birds – now here, now there.

We might have lazed there until they went
To sleep, under the trees that had parted for us,
But the clouds then parted for the sun

Who went beating down all his radiant glory till,
Pink like newborn jumbos, we
Awoke - to find that we were hardly pachyderms.

The Chimera

Amidst small-talk of leaves and twigs
– Loose gossip blown from tree to tree
As wind weaves through their wiry wigs –
A bashful voice cried out to me.

A rustle, hesitant and shy,
Escapéd scattered bush below
And from dry grasses grown knee-high
A leath’ry, rhomboid head did show.

A pair of beads on patchwork skin
– The first wild snake I’d ever seen,
Its head upon a guillotine
Of double-edgéd blades of green.

But soft! I noticed, out its side,
Lain flat and flaccid upon ground,
Protruding from smooth, quilted hide
Were infant’s limbs so frail and round.

This lizard cub, its cover blown,
Then roared a toothless, gaping, “Go!”
And flashed a pearly-fleshy tone
Of ire from its throat aglow.

And there I stared it in the eye
As it impersonated stone.
This skink that had come seeking my
Attention wished to be alone.

With final emphasis it turned,
To plod off at its lumb’ring pace,
And left the mem’ry deeply burned
Of its posterior in my face.

Satit

For Puy, Fah and Fai

Two days we took to build a schoolhouse fence
To keep the village children safely in.
Two days was all it took for you, my friends,
To free the child that I had bound within.
Two days it took us thirteen walls to paint,
Yet, in two days, I hardly could conceive,
The memories we made are no less faint
Or vivid than the murals that we leave.

But why have we to count the days we took?
Towards the years ahead we all should look.
Count not the time we have together spent
And not how many emails we have sent
For Friendship isn’t merely just the sum
Of what has gone; but what has yet to come.