In this week’s poem I try to explore the choices we make about how, and at what level, to live our lives.
Choices
Plumb the depth –
Where you spend your hours
is where you spend your days.
Root around inside yourself,
in unexplored regions
you may find
what you did not know you sought.
Soar with awe –
Where you spend your days
is where you spend your years.
There are wild places
outside the digitally enhanced, first class lounge.
Beyond your door
a path is waiting for your step.
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Dhaka 2014
A micropoem while I work on this week’s poem for the site.
Drenched
Drenched through in a storm
in a teacup
of ginger and fresh lemon brew.
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Dhaka 2014
grey lid on stewing city
creeping mold
moist neck-hair
monsoon season fills the air
dhaka 2014
Impressions of Chittagong from a trip earlier this week.
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Chittagong
Airport to seaport,
escorted by colossal container vessels.
Road, estuary, river carry us citywards.
all routes lead to Chittagong.
Ancient harbor sky-lined by cranes,
crowded by container playgrounds,
lined by black wood and red rusting hulks
high and drying on draining low-tide flats.
Road construction stopped
for delicate demolition of a mosque.
Squeeze past yellow trucks piled high with blue drums,
spiked security walls, factories, export zones.
Great meeting of highways, crossroads of commerce,
trading, laboring, loading, haggling.
Milling, mingling crowds.
Hansom sharp-featured Bengalis,
wide cheek-boned, crinkle eyed hill-people,
farmers, merchants, sailors.
Colors and smells of dry fish markets, vegetable stands,
sand piles and red crushed brick building sites;
high-rises and terminals,
trains, trucks, ships, planes.
Forty degrees and a humid sea breeze
Chittagong is open for business.
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Chittagong, Bangladesh 2014
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Bravely accept
terrifying truths
of God and death.
Blinders fall away.
Dawns understanding
of elements and energy.
.
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Dhaka 2014
There is so much beautiful Bangladesh outside the cities, too often forgotten in our busy Dhaka life
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Bangladesh
A perfect garden – leveled, lush and growing;
leave chimneys’ pulse, tin cities, in your wake,
fly low on leafy lanes and endless highways;
this garden stretches mountains to mangroves.
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Tender fields are lawns too fine to step on,
homesteads hide in shady fruiting trees;
crop residues neat piled are mushroom mountains,
ducks lure weary gardeners to cool ponds.
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Graceful trees line tempting paths and alleys,
saris splash red colours in warm light,
playing children’s perfect animation,
cows and goats chew thoughtfully on green.
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Bangladesh 2014
Peace in the park after rain,
last drops still falling,
damp fledglings calling.
Peace is the morning.
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A haiku for the season
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Rain
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Silhouette of tossing fronds
on violet sky
Rain passionately arrives
.
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In Ladies’ Park jackfruit swell like lumpy green balloons filling daily with sweet summer breath of the jackfruit tree.
Impressions from a morning walk near Bogra. I had spent a hot and sleepless night after a wild storm had kept the windows rattling and the power off, so that the temperature in the hotel room was in the 30’s all night. Refreshing to see the rain washed and wind swept landscape in the morning. Meanwhile sleeping amphibians were also awakened by the first heavy rain shower of the season.
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Spawning
After rain-stormy night
morning reverberates
as axes chop storm felled wood,
and birds twitter sadly for windswept nests,
but all sound pales to the proud manly croak
from lusty frogs in flooded
fields and ditches.
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