Your blouse rests
where it always has,
draped on top the kitchen chair.
We’ve changed homes since you’ve gone,
but it still sits in the same position
of the table
that it always has.
Sometimes, we wash it,
to keep it clean.
It’s silly of us –
really –
who washes a blouse
that’s no longer worn?
This poem is based on some recent knowledge about my roots:
Bloodlines
My mother’s and father’s roots
are like of the air and sea,
so desperately disparate
were their worlds.
My mother’s call back to
the Independent rebels
who fought the French,
who had almost won
Vietnam’s freedom,
but may have massacred
Christians in the process,
just as the French had massacred
Annam in the process
of colonizing.
My father’s roots
collaborated with those French,
built railroads for them
to take over Vietnam,
and rename it Indochine.
If these ancestors had met,
I liked to kid
that they would most likely
do battle with one another,
in a bid for Vietnam,
in a bid for whose blood
would be remembered
as heroes,
and the other
as traitors.
But really,
blood runs through both lines,
blood runs through,
and marks them
both
with Vietnam’s blood.
When I think of you,
I think of the early morning market
From the window, way before sunrise.
The old street vendor with her big barrel
Engulfing the skin-and-bone hunch back.
Her soft shivering voice: “Fresh fish, fresh shrimps”
Then off she phased into the foggy road.
When I think of you,
I think of the smile that warmed my heart,
From the crooked toothed cyclo driver
Patiently waiting on the side street
The intoxicating coffee and smoke nearby
Motorcycles and bicycles,
The honks, a nonstop monologue.
The day has started, but no customers.
Then I think of the far away farm, the green rice field
That ran across to the other side of earth.
The sweaty face of the girl, whose feet were halfway in mud,
The old water buffalo, the young farm boy
Tiredly over the hill, they walked
Soft breezes echoeing in the bamboo forests
Could not ease the heat of the day.
No lunch, no break, but there’s still work.
I remember all the things I learned about you
The twenty two hundred kilometers of sea shores
Cross along the map with the shape of an old man’s curved back
With four thousand year long story to read.
So you fought bravely in blood.
Then peacefully sang me an old folk song.
I think of all the lullabies my mother had
About the crying Heron, the Egret, the Crane
The monsoon, tin roof sluiced with rain
The bamboo bridge, the banana bush,
The silver moon sailing across the land
When I think of you, I always think
Of the name I have long loved.
Not some colonial’s Indochine,
Nor that word connected with the war I dreaded.
But the sweet old love story
Of the mountain king and the sea princess
From whom I was born the 100th child!
This poem was based on some young boys I saw playing by the roads our tour bus was taking in Vietnam.
My Concerns
I do not know that
you are watching me play,
or rather,
I should say,
I do not care.
What I care for
is how the mud
squishes between my toes and my toe nails
as I play soccer with my friends,
how I must be careful
to not hit the clothes on the wires,
to not hit the passing motorbikes,
to not be hit by the ball
and dirty my clothes that
my mom will scold me for,
to not have my slightly flat
red, rubber ball, fall into the small lake,
and have to get it before it gets too deep
by the holy lotus flowers.
I do not know that you pity
my bare feet,
my slightly flat rubber ball,
my hand me down clothes,
or rather,
I should say,
I do not care.
Here’s a newer poem of mine that I did after Snowflower encouraged me to write about Nature, since the birds and bees are always happy. While it is about Nature, it’s not exactly happy. It kind of is Mary Oliver-like, I think, but nowhere near as nice. Anyhow, here it is:
For the Hummingbird
You do not have to work
at the pace of a hummingbird’s flutter,
even they stop in quiet moments
of the summer heat,
to rest on a wire of our old Christmas lights,
high above any stress from below,
and shaded by trees from the constantly burning sun
that reminds you that the day is ever shortening.
Even the hummingbird rests,
when they know
they have at most
this year to live.
Softening
It was my fourth birthday,
which I don’t remember much of,
except for this –
I had received two dinosaurs,
a T-Rex, and triceratops,
from whom, I can’t recall.
The triceratops was my favorite,
even then, I had a predilection
for peaceful grazers
armed with defensive shields
and devices
like horns and tails,
in case their calm world
was threatened.
What I remember most,
was my disappointment
the next morning,
when I came to play with
my new treasures.
You, who had feared
that to touch
the world’s sharp mess,
that to touch nature’s,
and others’,
sharp messes, or
their defensive shields,
and devices,
would break your
defensive shields,
would threaten
your calm world,
you had cut off the horns,
and tails,
the tools the dinosaurs
had to defend themselves.
I was crushed at the time.
Looking back,
that was just you attempting to
protect me
from a sharp mess,
to protect me
from myself.
You touched the foreign,
to help me escape
messy harm,
the sharp mess
of the world
that you could not.
It was your love
breaking through.
This one’s an older work of mine, but one that I’m rather fond of:
The Old Warrior
My favorite photo of you
doesn’t have you looking your best,
but it’s you at your best.
It’s the photo of you taken
on your nephew’s wedding day.
You’re sitting alone,
slightly battered pink with drink
and hammered by the sun.
You’re in a yellow sundress
that hung low.
It was during your indulgent years,
where you ate our scraps
so starving children wouldn’t cry out
in indignant outrage.
You’re looking wistful, off in the distance
of the small reception,
not focusing on any one thing.
You’re looking almost bittersweet,
and contemplative.
Yet, you also looked, no, you were,
you were tired.
I wouldn’t learn until a year after why,
but your husband’s indiscretions
had only been revealed
at least partially
a day before the big day.
The exhaustion of the news,
the battle that must have ensued
when the bomb was dropped,
made your eyes thoughtful,
perhaps wondering what this new
married couple
would have in store
after you had scrambled to salvage your marriage
in the wreckage.
But there was something else,
in spite of everything,
you still looked content,
at least at that moment.
It was as if you had made peace,
the war ended,
and finally,
finally,
you had come home.
Here’s a poem I wrote this morning based on a recent discussion:
Settling Down
We were discussing homes,
and settling down,
I wanted to see the future
paved down with smooth school roads,
and carpools with loud kids,
with afterschool soccer practices.
You, were not opposed to it,
but the idea of committing
to just one safe, flat
future, I think, so soon,
scared you.
You, deep down, I think,
still wanted the risk of youth,
to make a name for yourself
in the world,
to take chances with a venture,
or adventure
to new places, like Greece, New Zealand,
and Japan.
I think it came from
your mostly stable youth.
I, always wanted
days that I could count on
to know what would happen,
small, but modestly happy days.
A quiet kind of life,
where I would get to be
a quiet kind of wife.
For Springpoem
How do you write poems to a poet?
To let the words appear on paper,
or the computer screen, in fact,
so when your eyes absorb the lines,
all the colors, the shapes and the sizes
travel to your neurons, axons and dendrites,
carried by all the synapses to your heart,
where my love, my thoughts, my feelings
mix into a passionate painting,
like Starry Night, Sun Flowers or the Irises.
How do you write poems to a poet?
Because you see,
my words are limited.
There are only images in my brain,
my left is stronger than my right,
when you are the opposite,
while your words are vast like ocean,
mine like a tiny puddle of rain.
How do you write poems to a poet?
Gather all the words I know,
hoping for a big storm,
the puddle grows into a lake,
flows my words like a river
that carries me to you
through the white waves
to the open sea.
This is another poem from this past weekend, when I was forcing myself to be productive…or at least do something while staying up ridiculously late at night. I think it’s somewhat meandering, but people seem to like this one:
For the past week,
in the nights,
I have risen from our bed
for some reason or another
as sure as the moon
reflects the sun’s day
and shines in awakening
to the darkness
of restless thoughts.
You try to calm me down
from my excitement.
talking to me of willow trees
with leaves whispering through the winds,
counting sheep,
holding me still,
so that I do not cycle into the bleakness
of my spiraling thoughts,
and reflect, or brood, whatever have you,
upon the darkness that surrounds us.
But your arms cannot hold me back
from what I cannot escape –
Nature, or my nature, whatever have you.
But I compromise,
I do not dwell in the black,
but seek the glow of this screen,
and although awakened to the darkness,
to dispel them through
reflecting upon the bright spots of my day
and to write of the night’s light.