Tea

 

Tea is a chestnut horse with a steam-grey mane. It’s a mountainside rippling bright green in the breeze, folded into a blue box with elephants marching round the lid. It was born on the Irrawaddy and gave birth to the Cutty Sark-- tea launched a thousand ships, white-winged clippers spanning the Pacific. Tea has been a tool of empire and a call to revolution. It’s a word in every language and a taste on every tongue. It’s smoke, grass, flowers; it’s sometimes called gunpowder but that’s just marketing.

Tea comes in the morning to chat about my plans for the day. Tea comes in the evening to wish me sweet dreams. When I cry into my teacup, the steam hides my tears. But what they tell you about tealeaves is not true, tea is too wise to play the fortune-telling game and would rather talk about history anyway.

Tea is black, white, yellow, red, green. They’ve trained monkeys to pick it but there are no machines that can do the job. It’s a warm blanket when it’s cold and a cool breeze when it’s hot; it likes to be served with grace and drunk with appreciation and if you can do that, it will always be your friend.

 

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 nacreous cloud

 a nacreous cloud

an eye of iridescence

with long dark lashes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Tea and Coffee

I’ve replaced my morning coffee

with a cup of oolong tea.

Plain oolong. Oolong with lemon.

Go-getter coffee that I drank for work

replaced with tea, for contemplation.

Oolong with florals. Oolong with vanilla.

I drank tea as a child, came to coffee

as an adult, never really liked the taste,

needed caffeine against chronic exhaustion.

Is it true that coffee was never really me?

I was born in the year of the Wood Dragon.

Now I drink oolong, black dragon tea.

 

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

Praise Song for the Mae Ping

 

I praise the Mae Ping

because she has swallowed thunder.

Because she carries the breath of mountains as far as the sea.

Because kingfishers haunt her banks and cranes fly overhead.

Her sisters and daughters, her mother, this family of rivers

make green these lands.

I praise her offspring dug by human hands across this plain between mountains.

I praise her because she holds us all in her lap.

She is strong and never sleeps. She will not be trifled with.

I praise the courage of the Lanna people

who call her floodplain home.

I praise the Mae Ping, headwaters, banks, low water and high; at each bend and bridge, I praise her.

Daughter of mighty mountains, child of the monsoon

I make my new home beside you.

I praise 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

Dangerous Crossing

 In the street, puddles grow and merge like the Red Sea preparing to swallow Pharoah. Motorcyclists zip by in candy-colored slickers. Who is the mysterious man in orange who halts traffic with a wave of his arm?

a shrill whistle sounds

thunder rumbles overhead

we cross in safety

 

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 thousand-hooved herd

 

a thousand-hooved herd

trampling over the rooftops

monsoon rains approach

 

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

Blown Off Course

Broken clouds and shattered thunder

fill the sky. A stormy night.

Sheets of rain are torn asunder

by the wind that raids and plunders,

scattering its forks of light

through broken clouds. O, shattered thunder

in my heart, lands lost under

waves of salt that glitter bright!

Seas of tears that tear asunder

to reveal a hidden wonder--

new land receives my panicked flight.

Soften, clouds; fall silent, thunder.

Gentle rains, bring me delight.

 

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 Different Green

Altogether brighter, not the

somber green of conifers.

Broad leaves, fig and frangipani, Indian almond,

pinnate, monkey-pod and Madagascar flamboyant.

No blossoms at this season

but the leaves will not fall.

I am unmoored from the calendar,

released from the tyranny of fall and spring.

I watch the rivers fill and sink,

slower breathing than I'm used to.

O leaf, green leaf that rhymes with grief

I'm learning to let go. Show me

how to choose my time.

 

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

Dead Season

 

The sky is grey and hides the sun,

there is no wind, the air is still.

The promised rain has not yet come.

In blazing summer, we would shun

the sunlight. knowing it can kill

but now the grey sky hides the sun.

In winter, we have learned to run

through puddles, dodging overspill

but now, the rain has not yet come.

Between things ended and begun,

between fall heat and winter chill,

the sky is grey. There is no sun

to warm the dead grass. Streams are dumb

and reservoirs cannot refill

because the rain has not yet come.

There is so much that must be done

but oh, I cannot find the will

while greyness blocks the light of sun

and I await the rain to come.

 

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

Academy of Natural Sciences, Drexel University, Philadelphia

 

The moose is still there, fifty-plus years later,

raising its antlered head before a backdrop

of painted water and taiga pines. Behind glass

it watches the curious crowds of people.

When I first saw it I was five, six--

probably younger-- I remember--

how it towered over me, the moose.

Since then I’ve stood in an elephant’s shadow

swum in the wake of giant mantas

slept at the foot of a live volcano. But awe

is not innate. You have to learn it. I learned it first

at the feet of the moose.

 

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

On my retirement

 

I’ve done a lot, and left undone the rest,

I lost some races, but I won the rest.

The day-sky fades to twilight castle-clouds,

Even the tireless sun must come to rest.

I sang this song through every verse I knew.

The tune goes on. I guess I’ll hum the rest.

The breeze tears cobwebs from my window-ledge,

who knows which spider there outspun the rest?

Seven days of work, and it was good,

and even God, whose Name is One, did rest.

 

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

Mockingbird

 

Hush, little baby, don't say a word

Papa's asylum case will not be heard.

And if asylum won't be given

Papa’s gonna go to detention prison.

And if detention’s not forever

Papa'll be deported when it's over.

And if he’s deported to the place we fled

In a year or so, papa will be dead.

And if he’s dead, they'll come for me

We’ll live in jail in the land of the free.

Hush, little baby, don't you cry

Papa will be with you by and by.

 

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

Change

Well, you know

that every castle’s built on shifting sand.

Your certainties must turn to melting snow

and spill like water from your empty hands

And well you know

this world is not a solid place to stand

every kingdom’s waiting for its overthrow

and the future never will be what we planned.

But also know

that only rust remembers every battle

that only dust knows all it’s smoothed away.

The lucky man rides high in a golden saddle

for just one day

for just one day.

And well you know

the past has left you feeling abandoned

the present time just seems to go so slow

the future’s like a rock on which you’re stranded.

It may be so.

Remember though

that every lie in full of time will be unspoken

and every scar with passing years will fade away.

All your chains and prison bars, they will be broken

And we shall see

(oh, we shall see)

a brighter day.

 

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

Cat Hotel

 

My baby left me, I can’t break her spell

She moved in down at the Cat Hotel.

My baby left me, everyone knows

She made her home at the Catio.

She was led astray by a ginger tom

who sang in the backyard all night long.

He walked our fence on a moonlit night

Swore he’d be faithful until daylight.

My baby left me and now my spouse

Makes me sleep in the old doghouse.

 

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

Give Warning to the World

You have vacated the watchtowers

on the walls of the world.

And out there in the gulf

you renamed “America”

you know there is

a monster storm spinning up

Katrina’s bigger, angrier friend

swollen on carbon-fueled heat,

veins laced with leaking crude. No-one

will see it coming until

it makes landfall, stomping the coastline

into giant flood-filled craters.

Then staggers inland, stumble-drunk

spitting tornadoes like a bar-fight loser spitting teeth.

Crumples prostrate against some piedmont,

pisses out a billion gallons of Gulf condensate

like cheap beer, washing out roads, dams, towns

and in its final spasms clutches the mountainside

crumpling it like a stained sheet, pulls down

mud to drown small cities. And from the fresh

and unmarked graves the ghosts cry Why?

Why were we not warned?

 

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 April Moon

The moon’s cup, brimming

with the fragrance of lilacs--

let it spill over!

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

Why We’re Leaving

This is what we inherit:

a broken planet, desperate people, the corpse of a nation-state raddled with corporate leeches.

And so, like every orphan

we gather a few possessions in a sack

and hit the road.

 

 

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