Love Poem for Chiang Mai

I shelter in the shade of your ruined wall.

I rest at the rim of the old canal.

Your crooked streets comfort me,

a maze surrounding sanctuary

and webbed with waterways. At every gate

a little shrine. Each public place,

an altar live with incense, fruit, or flowers.

Every street ends in a temple spire.

Under Buddha’s serene and golden gaze.

I shed my shoes on the temple stairs,

bow, kneel, bow forehead to floor.

Something’s always lost when a new door

opens. Something else is found.

My roots grow slowly into foreign ground.

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Temple and Town

Temple courtyard

Village square

Place of commerce

House of prayer.

House of worship

Marketplace

Daily life in

Sacred space.

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Chiang Mai's Canals

Little dragons, sleeping in the sun

you seem so tame. What works of hands,

what years of labor shaped this land?

Who knew when to call it done?

Do these sleeping dragons dream

of flowing free across the valleys

where now wind crooked streets and alleys?

Do canals remember they were streams?

Little dragons, sleeping in the mud,

caged in canals cut to human shape

do you hold a long longing for escape?

Do you dream thunder and wake in flood?

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

New adventure, redux

 So we are back from Thailand and I have re-published a few posts that I had hidden (so as not to advertise too widely that we were out of the country). Also added some more thoughts, pictures, and a couple of poems.

For completeness I'll also post those poems here. "Luminous ghost" is actually one of them, written (composed) on the way to a temple in the mountains north of Chiang Mai.

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Luminous ghost

a luminous ghost

rides low at my right shoulder

sun in morning fog

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

A new adventure

 Details here

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Crow Commute

These mornings, I can see the crows commute

but backward. From downtown, a storm of wings

heads east across the river. Raucous things,

on sky of lavender, they’re black as boots.

 

They forage in the suburbs—so we’re told—

and gather, midday, to exchange the news

of morning work. We wonder at their views

on traffic, building work, the rain and cold.

 

I see them sometimes on our water tower,

enjoying what the crows call happy hour.

With day's work done, they chatter and they shout—

of corvine sports and politics, no doubt—

then rise by thousands, headed into town

at evening, when the sun is going down.

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Song of the Sidewalk

This is the tale I have to tell,

a song of belonging, a story of place.

These are the streets that I know so well.

 

This is the tale I have to tell

of falling in love at a walking pace

of falling under a sidewalk’s spell.

 

These are the streets that I know so well

that frame my life in this urban space

that ring to my step like a Sunday bell.

 

This is the tale I have to tell:

here’s where I stood, here I fell,

here’s where I found abiding grace.

 

These are the streets that I know so well

that it means more to live than just to dwell

because of the people who know my face.

 

When a home’s just a house that you have to sell

can the song of the sidewalk leave any trace?

That is the story I’ll have to tell.

These are the streets I must bid farewell.

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

november

today

 

something about the light said

 

winter

 

I said

 

I hear you 

 

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Frozen Syrup

My aunt keeps cubes of frozen syrup

for her hummingbird feeder. Because

those tiny engines (a hummer's heart

can weigh as little as 0.00875 ounces)

heat up fast, can break from their own

intensity. These little dynamos come,

drink, go away refreshed. Save what

you can. Even if it's only 0.00875 ounces -

you never know how the scale tilts

under God’s thumb.

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside