Interlude (49)

July 29th. Exactly one year since I started this series. This is the seventy-ninth poem.

If you’ve been reading this story, commenting, cheering me on – thank you for your support. Couldn’t have sustained the momentum without you. But I would greatly appreciate your consolidated review whenever you can send it to me. The series will draw to a close over the next few weeks (the end of August, I think) and I would love to add your review to this blog. 

That said, this poem will be Part 57.1 in keeping with the chronology. The thoughts, perhaps, are much older than that.

Part 57.1

(I) Maybe in another universe, I sit by the Chao
Phraya and watch the sunlight bouncing off the
porcelain chips on Wat Arun, while in the water,
in little purple boats, are people I know — friends,
lovers, children — dressed in gold and white, their
faces upturned, smiling. Full lips and long-lashed
eyes into which the blue sky falls and thickens to
black. (II) Trays of food are laid on a table, the
aroma of basil and coconut and jasmine rice;
someone plays a note, a flute perhaps, because

birds answer, those with long blue tails and little
red beaks, upside down in the fig trees. I feel
something that I can’t quite name and it takes me
a dream, a night and an undawned day to think
it may have been peace. (III) Nothing is happening
other than what we are seeing. Nothing is being
said other than what we are hearing. The spotted
butterflies are effusive in reply. (IV) Fish swim
in quiet circles around the boat, grey shadows
in overcast pools around my irises. I think I

must jump in to save the moon. Where is it in
this yellow sunshine, in this day that isn’t? What
kind of peace swallows a moon and a whole
morning? (V) The sea washes back into the river,
the water is salty now, the boat rocks, someone
screams. I scream. It is still murky. The water has
curdled, split into flesh and blood. He wakes
me up. A white and gold bed. A dream. A night.
And a day that has not dawned. (VI) Water slaps
against an empty lilac boat. I feel something that

I cannot name and perhaps it might be peace. It
tastes of fear and coconut milk. White like rice.
Gold. (VII) He is talking. Quickly. As if there is no
time. There are crocodiles in the water. The
trays are floating in mottled brine. Like oblations.
The sun has set and the temple is silhouetted
against a sky which has fallen into my eyes and
turned to night. (VIII) Rest, he says. Rest in peace.
Maybe in another universe, the moon and I died,
this morning. (IX) Here, I am alive. I sigh. What if

we could wish for happy endings? A place, a time,
an audience, a quiet, all things done that need to
be done, all things undone that can no longer be
held together by a lie, by a word that will not come.
A clever close, a twist, a dance of language that drags
the reader back to the first line. First moment. Born
as the monsoon retreated. Finished in the poetry of
an unbidden storm. A place, a time, a quiet. (X) The
setting sun is caught in a tangle of wire. A story is
trapped in a dream, in a night, in an undawned day.

(Bangkok, Thailand)