I am thinking of Japan

'Still alive,' a friend from Japan writes. 'Thank you for your worries,' another says. 'The number of missing people is increasing as more unmissing people are able to make reports,' writes a friend from Chiba. 'We are all safe (in Setagaya-ku), our dog and cat are too. Is N---Land shaking???' From 2-chome in Tokyo, a child says, 'It was like being on a rollercoaster!' A younger sibling, 'Monkeys are shaking my bed.' One parent, 'Of course I'm alright! I was always going to be alright,' and the other, a poet friend, says that so far, the hardest thing has been explaining the concept of radiation to her son. She emailed seven hours ago, with headlines: Heightened State of Alert at Atom Plant... and Tokyo Electric Power said it has lost its ability to control pressure in some of the reactors of a second nuclear power plant at its quake-hit Fukushima plant... She says one embassy warns its nationals to stay indoors. Another for its citizens to evacuate. Tokyo Disney is shut for a week, and hearing from each of us matters. She had written a poem about Chernobyl and is now thinking of bringing it out again. /
I posted the above about 8 hours ago. A friend in Japan has just written that two more nuclear reactors are starting to dissolve, that some people are running away from Tokyo, that young people are particularly frightened, that some of his relatives in Tohoku seem to have died. 'The situation is becoming serious. I am still alive. 2011-3-14.'
I am thinking of Japan, of everyone.
Photo: Vines, Fan Lau, Hong Kong
Text: I have heard from my friends from/in Japan, c, y, a, s, o and a.
I would like to hear from m and s.

taking this big ferry

skyscraper shore
engine drum

your quiet seat
engine drum

rain pats the ocean
engine drum

city big ship lights
engine drum

I want to find you in the cold wind channel
but all the waves are going the other way

I never see who is driving me home

Photo: Jordan Ferry, Hong Kong
Text: 'Taking this Big Ferry' is from my book, 'Delicate Access'
I used to take two ferries to get to my home. Slow, wide, wooden seats, open to ocean wind. The photograph records the first ride, on an old vehicular ferry, which used to run from Jordan District to Central District. The poem is set on the second one, from Central District to my carless island, fifty-minutes away, the engine soothing, the captain always unseen.

silver tip and timelessness

I met this dead buffalo head on a table top, the body skyward, its eye about level with mine.
At the time, I was curious about how the silvery horn starts: like the part of hair, very crusty hair. 
Now, I am curious about how my friend will bring the buffalo into the world again. He also has the full outside body of a spotted foe. 
All of this came to mind yesterday with the sound of a deer in faraway hills. The whistle somehow timeless.
Photo: Dead buffalo head, in an artist's studio, Pittsburgh

peonies and excess

Yesterday, peonies. I think of a dear friend who adores the voluminous flower, and of Jane Kenyon, who writes, 'These are not Protestant work-ethic flowers. They loll about in gorgeousness; they live for art, they believe in excess... They seem like the diva in her dressing gown after the opera - still glistening, but spent.'
Photo: Peonies in a painter's home, Masterton, New Zealand
Text: Excerpt from 'The Moment of Peonies' in the book,
'A Hundred White Daffodils' by Jane Kenyon (1947-1995)

a vertical sea

'Make a reason for this to mean happiness' I once wrote in a poem that features scaffolding nets. To me, whatever the time of day, in whatever colo(u)r, the nets bring me that.
I remember walking through the loud and crowded streets of Hong Kong with a poet-friend from Okinawa. I said, look up! A gorgeous surface of green, windblown. A vertical sea.
Photo: Friends' building wrapped in Christmas-like scaffolding, Hong Kong
Text: The poem 'Make a Reason' is from my book, 'Delicate Access'

I call today men's day

Yesterday was for women, today can be for men.
And every day for all. Equally. Peacefully. Yes.
Let us all Think-Feel, Hand-Touch, Stand-Support
another. Whatever the ethnicity, age, gender...
I really don't think it's hard to do. Do you?
Photo: Construction company sign, Wellington, New Zealand

one woman, one hundred years

Today is the 100th year for International Women's Day to be observed. In places like Russia and China, it's a very big day, with events and promises all around the country. Women hold up half the sky, the Chinese say. Not many people know that rural women in China have one of the highest, if not the highest, suicide rate in the world. Poverty, sexism, spouse abuse, and men's (over)drinking of strong rice alcohol are all factors. I know of one village that has put an end to this violence -- of men against women, of woman against self. One thing that helped was putting very drunk men into a locked room where they could sober up peacefully. It worked. The last I've heard, there have been no suicides, or attempts. A lot less alcoholism. And more respect, appreciation, harmony.

Photo: A girl and a kind of toy at a museum, Pittsburgh 
Text: The story discussed is from the book CHINA VOICES, which I co-edited

orchid streetcorner

In Hong Kong, Bangkok and other places around Asia, these flowers are sold on the street in little bunches. Some people put them in their hair. Drivers might hang them from rear view mirrors. I call them by their Cantonese name 'bat lan', not 'white orchid'. Sometimes, I buy a bunch and hide a bloom on each of my colleagues' keyboards. When the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died, we put one on everyone's chair - the whole room abloom.
Photo: For sale from a sidewalk, Bangkok

mother, mothering

We have two cows, always together. Both mother the other, biologically or socially. Sometimes they groom each other,  eyes all dreamy. This is Binny, who bellows every so often for grass or hay, for self, and mother, one or two years older.

Photo: Binny, a steer, Carterton, New Zealand

folded water, folded paper

To my eye, this will always be a bulging square of water, folded and tied to a fence. I found it one day on a walk during my lunch hour. Nearby is a hawker who sells fishing supplies.
Photo: Folded paper inside a folded plastic bag, near my office, Northpoint, Hong Kong

skin and earth

Xinjiang. The sun never burns here, he says. Days so bright, so long, we never find the night moon. We walk hot noon slopes, hear our breath, hear our breath. Then we hear a river, find pink flowers and willow. Oasis as fresh as its word.

Photo: A friend's toes on cracked earth, Xinjiang, June 2010
Text: From a prose poem (in progress) called 'How Bright We Are'

whole

Photo: Newly made baby crib, Philippines

One week after the earthquake

Yesterday, at 12:51, silence. 
Today, I am sitting between two Maori women, who are facebooking friends in Christchurch, asking what they might need. Hand sanitiser, they are told. Also gas canisters, guitar strings, coffee beans. A woman living in a cordoned-off zone says that people in the city are changing, staring into 'middle distance' and not spontaneously greeting each other anymore. A student in a hospital holds the hands of the people who rescued her. She says, 'I trust you' and smiles. She laughs her first laughs in a week. 
Photo: Covered vineyards, Martinborough, New Zealand

I call today February 29

A dear friend of mine was born on February 29, and I give this image to her.
Photo: At a bazaar in Kashgar