SLASH AND BURN

It is early March and

The dry season has several weeks left to run and

The fires of slash and burn farmers are still burning and

So the skies above Chiang Mai are stained pearl grey.

Also, the mild weather of December and

January is a distant memory and

The tropical heat is becoming oppressive again even though

The sun seems to struggle to penetrate the hazy air.

Despite the heat and smoke,

When the mercury falls into the low thirties

During the final daylight hour before sunset,

I stick to my (almost) daily routine

Of walking two kilometres or

Sometimes slightly more.

As I walk I can see the blurry sun

Floating like a fat marigold balloon

That is somehow resisting

The gravitational pull of the mountains in the west

While sooty particles in the thick air

Irritate my throat and my nostrils and

The heat makes me sweat

Enough to make me believe

That the exercise is doing me good.

OVER THERE

The last time it happened

I was drinking Swan Lager

Slouched on a modular lounge

In an archaic colonial house

And through the louvres

I could hear the sea breeze

Brushing bougainvillea petals

And nudging sun-curled leaves

On fruit-laden tropical trees

While waves washed the shore

And the passing parade

Of Africans spoke in sounds

That made me afraid

And I felt strange and foreign.

Tonight I sip cheap scotch

And I am horizontal

On an old man’s recliner

In a modern dwelling

Not far from rice paddies

And there are golden shower flowers

Lining the lanes winding

Towards markets and temples

And beyond wide open windows

The neighbours converse

As if in infinite song

Up and down Asia’s tonal scales

While blanched lemongrass

And scorched chillies season the air

Below the smoky crown

Of a still starless hot sky

That masks mountains nearby

And I am an alien and an outsider.

MEKONG

It was the colour of the earth —

Clay to be specific —

Not at all like the rivers of home

On their run down to the Pacific —

Except when they’re in horrid flood

And spoiled with cruelty and mud.

On the Thai side was Gotoma,

Statuesque, all gold and ethereal.

Across in Laos was another world —

Sky-scraping palaces of the material.

A shard of green wilderness

Splintered out of Myanmar,

As if the land itself sought to escape

But was blocked, unable to get too far.

From the embankment on Thailand’s shore,

I watched the long tail boats propel,

While I thought of days of purple haze and fiery hell,

When this dragon, this mother water, was poisoned by war.

THE END OF SCHOOL

Was it really fifty-two years ago?

It was a morning so balmy

That we dressed for endless summer.

In our warmth, we celebrated like a conquering army.

The future we foresaw was a jolly jumble —

One part projections out of a bleary past,

One part prophecies inspired by hope —

A vision that was only a rough forecast.

That distant day was over and gone

Well before we had time to think

About the betrayals and failures

Lurking behind the next blink.

For a moment we were young and beautiful

And beyond the reach of ugly blame

For mistakes awaiting us in a broken world.

It was later that we learned to look back in shame.

WAT PHRA THAT DOI KHAM

From the ring-roads it was invisible,

Lost in Chiang Mai’s monsoonal green

In a season that flattered the hills

And made them seem pristine.

Suddenly we saw more than steep bluffs —

The cliff was ablaze with strafes of light,

As if flames were scorching the tree tops,

And distant gold plate seemed set to ignite.

We stopped to buy white garlands

From vendors waiting in the shade,

Before the road hair-pin-bended

Its way to the heart of a sacred glade.

The place was the home of dragons rampant and snakes

Coiled before a reclining idol — a countenance so serene

That I almost understood the pilgrims’ trust

In merit gleaned from offerings seen and faith unseen.

THE BRIDGE

All that remains is a memory of a bridge,

Spanning a river that, in its prehistory,

Churned through cliff-sided valleys

And then flooded ample plains, now stretched out

Beside rolling hills, now backdropped by blue mountains,

And left the clammy slime crammed with cradles of life.

When the ‘Oxbra’ was first named and tamed

The colony was fed and the famine was finished.

Forsaken refugees, sent to a land they did not know

By governments that, it must be said,

Would surely have preferred them dead,

Turned the lowlands into fields of fruitful triumphs —

Hard labour of outcasts,

Their sullied hearts washed clean on the muddy river flats.

New wealth mustered free men,

Keen to make super-profits from the land —

A certainty once the early work was done.

First nations were vanquished,

Convict settlers’ farms were looted,

As the shrines of capital were built

By the raiders and the traders,

The merchants and their confidants —

Men unaware of their own guilt,

Indemnified against risk and chance.

If you go there you can watch the pageants —

New generations stroll on mean pavements

Laid recklessly along the falsified embankments,

Unwittingly untutored by tangible remembrance.

If we, who will soon be out of time,

Try to tell them about a lawful crime —

A monument’s misappropriation —

Will they will hear a memory of a bridge?

The photograph was taken by Paul Caleo and published on Facebook in 2021.  It shows the old Windsor bridge in the final stages of its demolition.

PARADISE

“And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”  (Luke 23 : 43 KJV) 

There is no garden scenery —

No trees with their dangling greenery

Arrayed around still waters and a silver stream.

No sun sparkles like a yellow lantern

And the moon and the stars do not gleam.

There is, in fact, nothing we could realise

And nothing our minds might recognise.

For, in the simplicity of eternity,

What sustains us other than Him?

Have you not seen?

Have you not heard?

When we are empty,

So we are nothing

And we possess nothing,

Then we can rest in Him.