Poetry from Thailand

Original poetry written in and about rural Thailand.

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Location: Chong Khae, Nakhonsawan, Thailand

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Where Are Nam Too-umb?

We have a little white puppy
named Nam Too-umb because she
showed up with the Thai flood.
She was only three days old on
12 October when we escaped
Ayutthaya and came here.

This afternoon as I sipped vodka
and listened to The Rolling Stones,
Beam, my wife's five year old
granddaughter, came into my room
dressed in her red-checkered school
skirt, and pigtails, and asked me,
“Where are Nam Too-umb?”

The puppy had been creating a flood
of her own all day which I cleaned
up while the girls were at school
so I didn't care diddly-squat where
the animal was, but oh, to hear
unprompted English for the first
time in this far-off Asian land was
reason for a Thanksgiving even
this pilgrim could understand.


FG 11/24/2011

All rights reserved by the author Forrest Greenwood.

If you are wondering, Thanksgiving is not celebrated in Thailand.
Christmas is however by retailers and a small Christian
community. Even Chong Khae has a Christian church. As
Luck would have it, I was tooling by on my motor scooter
last Sunday and slowed, thinking I might stop in (well, sort of).
But when I heard a woman singing karaoke in Thai I passed.

My Thanksgiving Day meal was: toasted tuna fish sandwich
and made-from-scratch Ffrs. No complaints here.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Nam = Thai word for water, Toomb = flood