An old man’s house
Betimbered of memory,
A spotted hand moves
Along the grain of each plank,
Evoking, like a needle in a waxen groove,
The past in its colors and voices:

I remember treading up a dirt road,
Grassy in the center, to a stupa,
The sky low, the air humid,
Buzzing with winged life,
The same buzzing in the Buddha’s day:

I wore a sarong, gold, knotted in front.
Open-mouthed children, thin as rails, staring:
A man in white striking gongs in a U-shaped frame.
I understood what people were saying.

Another plank: looking at my hands in second grade:
Smooth, unblemished,
Almost too beautiful, I thought.

The rise and fall of hidden cicadas,
Lightning bugs, breathless nights,
A car rumbling over the brick street,
Headlights bouncing.

The feel of my grandfather’s books,
Stories of knights, a medieval history,
Books about steam engines and logarithms:
Feeling free to explore my grandfather’s world,
Vanished even in my day.

A clacking typewriter that I took over:
Black and red ribbons like military decorations,
The bell, the stuck keys,
The clicking roller.

Everywhere words, words, words.
Today ‘flocculent’, and the nagging question:
Where does it come from? Flake?
The thrill of strange letters not on my typewriter:
Ö, D, â, T — yet far away
Someone was typing them.

Odds and ends, boards of every length,
Some worn, some like new,
Some stained, some rotten —
Now they are my home,
Just as my skin and skeleton are home to my mind.

February 21st, 2011