Unfinished Poem to Thailand

Something I've been working on today. If you guys have any feedback, suggestions, please comment. Is anything here that sounds a bit over the top or like it's not honest or it's too vague or too simple? Any comments? Feel free to write me here. I'd appreciate it! Thanks. Ani.




Unfinished Poem to Thailand


Once, a tree stood out against the blue, leafless and full of white birds.

At the highest point of the monastery, someone has placed white plumerias and purple bougainvilleas over symmetrically arranged bamboo sticks inside a blue plate filled with water: a way to greet the morning, a way to give thanks, a way that I understand, being far from home.

I crouch inside the roots of a tree to have my picture taken, not knowing the jasmine and marigolds dangling above my head mean a spirit is worshiped here.

I have made friends that I’ve lost in the making. I have made friends that I’ll keep even as I forget them.

Near River Kwai, I have climbed down stairs to see how we torture our own and I’ve climbed up the same stairs to find how we worship stone.

Elephants grabbed bananas out of my hands. I’ve sat with two tigers; it was like standing on a cliff readying to jump off. A monkey sat on a tree stump, holding his neck, as if to say he’d hang himself if I left.

The sun passed me many times and when it sat one evening, its reflection on the lake was a monk, waving a hand.

A long boat sliced through water. The water stitched itself right back.

The King and Queen smile, framed behind glass. They were my age once.

Golden temples stand ceremonious, and here, foreigners hold each other, smiling, in photos they will send home, in photos they’ll forget soon.

Nothing hits home like the lime green of a rice field. The field workers know it. The King knows it. The rats do too.

At the river market, the fisherman sells crabs and shrimp with haste. His boat sways at the dock, his boat longs to be anchored there a long time.

The grasses on the side of the road, leaning in the wind, their heads white in the sun, like my father, leaning and white.

Huts on the green river, holding each other. The people inside holding away from me.

The rain in the monsoon season, punctual every afternoon, like father coming home from work.

I have met happy people. I will never meet them again.

The sunlight behind white bouganvillea petals, cold and rich like sealed letters, mailed off to someone I wait for.

I lit a candle on a krathong, placed it on the pond water and pushed it gently out, watched it yield to the other krathongs then burn itself up. I tried not to be Thai about the flame though I still think about it at times.

Already a year after I’ve been married, my students see me in the hall and still say, “Hi, Miss Ani. Woops, I meant Mrs. Ani.”

A python lay like a wet sweater at the bottom of our garbage can.

There was a pot on a river, near dusk, tilted, about to pour, though nothing poured out, except the evening, filled with my longing.

I ran home in the rain. Found a feather stuck to my toe. Blessed the bird I never saw.

Once, the moon was a lantern in someone’s yard. In that yard, I sat across the moon, my silhouette on fire, wishing he could see me now.

In the woods, the light keeps running. For once, I keep up.

Thailand, where I want to say, the open mouths of orchids speak in my mother’s voice. In truth, it is only the dogs that speak my mother’s tongue. Dogs always wandering Thailand the way my mother has wandered, and her mother before her, and I afterwards. Thailand, where trees knot roots with each other, where they tell me to wait, where they say my own haven’t grown yet, so girl, stop searching.