half a world away

My friend says You're back.

Over unlimited nationwide call
We talked politics for hours.
He impassioned, myself spectator
Just returned. Two days later
I received his wedding invitation.

My friend asks Will you make it?

I do not tell I do not want to go.
Maybe the mind will change itself
And give my childhood friend
Our being at the same place again.
When I fly to see him

And the person we both knew
From high school I did not expect
He will marry twice,
Something inevitably will change.
I will feel ever more

The gray hair and the distance
Of what was, has been, will be.

woman with the sun behind her

How could your photos be so
beautiful your life
an entire summer

There must be no worries
they do not exist
they touch you not

There you are at play with
dog at the shore
one sunset

Your laughter and your memory
of it as well as my envy
will last very very long

crossing a body of water

Something always happens when 
water crosses over another 
body of water

This body over an ocean which
is really merely a river
of time 

Memory reaching out as far
its hand could go holding on 
the last shore it has been

Water crossing water
dreams
staying the same and not

Who can tell 
water from another
water?

The difference in time makes
worlds apart and presences
similar to ghosts

We keep
out of fear or love
both

















    

Love

On better days it is easy to remember
as though never forget
                       love
a clear thing
like the awareness of a lovely day
like this
without that cat across the street
                       black and passing

a matter of time

And does he tell you he will return?
In what words, scattered like rain or
Clumped together like flowers in bouquet,
Predictable as the swinging of a boy
Just small enough for the set, too old
The year after this next. In what words

Does he tell you he will return?

I move through water filled with pansies
And daylight that spills into the night,
People without colour in a language
Familiar yet strange; how do I tell her

I will return?

She waves her hand, says name no month.
There is a garden beside her, constant 
Sunshine above, occasional rains, 
Eternal stars. The dogs lay close to her.
I dream.
Watching the night here remain light.

no water but space

What separates us now is space.
Like air   like blank   like nothingness
Not a void   I think  for it too must have
Some vague directions pointing which way
One must go 

Home for now is a transitionary word
Much like the lengthened stay at airports
I have nearly forgotten how it feels like
The not quite entirely have moved in

What sense is it
The mind always knowing this is not the place
Even though it is where the body is
And will be   for years

I try not to think of her warmth 
Realise it has always been this way--a distance
Metaphorical or otherwise

Here  it is the tail end of summer
At 8 PM the sky remains light
I have not yet looked up the skies at night
Knowing there are no stars

So far away from her

(ants in this world) a long goodbye 9

I can count now on one hand
The number of days left on this little island
Of sweets. Days the colour of turmeric.
(It rains just now, wet monsoon has come)

This is a place of hope, no matter
What its people say. More than half its year
The bamboo chimes hanging on my front door
Sounds of water. The shore half hour away.

When the breeze blows on your beloved's hair
And when you see grown men and women
Come out at downpour, play with their children,
You will know why 

Tired white men find their way here
To rest at last from the world at large.
But I leave. By the cosmos' grace, I leave.
(An ant's work what we do. So little
         
To add to so much more.)
And two days before I leave, I shall ferry
Visit a spider woman in these islands, 
Who wrote poetry of memory, being, becoming

It shall be a moment in her herbs garden
Where there will be no promise
Only a doing by understanding
This so much work, this so much work

More than an entire ant's life can do. 

(ants in this world) a long goodbye 9

I can count now on one hand
The number of days left on this little island
Of sweets. Days the colour of turmeric.
(It rains just now, wet monsoon has come)

This is a place of hope, no matter
What its people say. More than half its year
The bamboo chimes hanging on my front door
Sounds of water. The shore half hour away.

When the breeze blows on your beloved's hair
And when you see grown men and women
Come out at downpour, play with their children,
You will know why 

Tired white men find their way here
To rest at last from the world at large.
But I leave. With the cosmos' grace, I leave.
(An ant's work what we do. So little
         
To add to so much more.)
And two days before I leave, I shall ferry
Visit a spider woman in these islands, 
Who wrote poetry of memory, being, becoming

It shall be a moment in her herbs garden
Where there will be no promise
Only a doing by understanding
This so much work, this so much work

More than an entire ant's life can do.