This week’s poem… so much happening but still to be processed, so I’ll make use of the memories and inspiration of those happy weeks in Kenya for another week.
Beached
Fine white line,
expanding, shrinking,
meandering between blue and green.
Contour where worlds collide,
battered bodies wash up,
fishermen launch and land,
children build with sand.
Sweat, tears, ocean water,
inorganically living,
organically eroding away.
Kenya 2015
This week’s poem, inspired by days spent at our old home on Diani Beach, Kenya.
Diani revisited
“It’s not all about nostalgia,” he says,
as we cross the disappearing beach to incoming tide,
recall him walking there,
his younger self.
Adults take up conversations
as if we stepped off the veranda
ten minutes ago,
youth take longer,
building new connections –
neural pathways altered in intervening years.
“It is not about the past” I agree,
we are making new memories, fresh adventures.
Tide is going out and we walk here,
our younger selves.
Diani 2015
My unplanned Christmas break is soon to end… caused by just too much going on (in the best possible way) and poor internet access while traveling, I hope to tap into all the interesting and inspiring events of the last few weeks with new poems in the coming days and weeks.
Rilla
This week’s poem inspired by exceptional people I know.
Like trees
Women.
Like trees
growing more substantial,
more encompassing,
more interesting,
with age.
Dhaka 2015
This week’s poem, inspired by a recent visit to Srimongol in the Sylhet region of Bangladesh. A part of the country surprisingly different from the delta areas.
Srimongol
We appear to have left Bangladesh;
ascending against rising hills,
ordered tea with lemon
and sugar
cane and rubber
plantations, gas fields
bubble into burning ponds,
hills, hills and looking back
the blink of endless paddies.
Shimongol, Bangladesh 2015
This week’s poem, delayed by technical and other issues, is the result of residues from a very vivid dream.
Subconscious
I woke when the Eritreans arrived, two men and a woman, dusty but dignified,
begging shelter for their illegal countrymen.
Somehow they had heard of hidden rooms readied under our floor.
We were recently reunited, deep in conversation when they burst in,
I had to tear myself from your eyes to focus,
but shaking myself, rising, I felt my blood flood with adrenaline,
the softening effect of reunion seeping away,
time now for action
and then I awoke.
Dhaka 2015
This week’s poem, dedicated to my niece Kristina, newly arrived in this part of Asia.
Curried vegetables
Oh God, save me from curried vegetables.
Three times per day,
bitter, spiny and ash gourd, all yellow,
cabbage, potato and green papaya,
all grated, mixed and yellowed.
Soft boiled fish with staring eyes
and invisible, sharp bones,
mounds of boiled white rice,
fans overhead ensure only the first mouthful is hot
and lots of yellow dahl floating in watery soup.
Please, sir, may I have a pizza,
thin crust,
concentrated taste of tomato
with fresh green basil leaf
and just a little extra cheese.
Perhaps a fresh green salad –
drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
Clean, fresh taste of simple ingredients
No need for condensed milk and sugary deserts,
boiled milky sweets, white and grainy with sugar,
cold milk-grey tea I do not require,
just a little glass of wine –
that will be fine.
Dhaka 2010
The terrible, bitter fight of those who will not let go of times that are ending, who will not accept that ordinary people in 2015 want to live in freedom from rules that are no longer relevant has been felt across the world this week and this month and this year.
Dhaka 2015
.
You can say of the people of Dhaka,
As you say of Artic mosquitos;
If there were more of them,
They would have to be smaller.
Dhaka, 2015
This week’s poem, inspired by the relief of sensing and feeling the approach of autumn and cooler weather in Bangladesh.
Jamalpur 2015