Poetry from Thailand

Original poetry written in and about rural Thailand.

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Location: Chong Khae, Nakhonsawan, Thailand

Friday, November 30, 2012

Northern Cross




Where I’ve ended up the Southern Cross
is still  low in the sky.   I can see it but
only a as marker that says, this way south. 
I’m still not near, it seems, to those
South Sea Isles that young men like me
use to dream of.

And I’m a long way from where I grew up,
too, but now my desire is to return and not go
forward, so when I navigate it’s my memory
of the seasons, not the stars that I often use.

I remember winters that were cold beyond
belief and summers too hot for anyone to ever
try to think.  But most of all I remember
the shorter east and west arms of spring and fall.

I remember spring as being cold and wet
with glistening street lights at night and
hardwood trees that sawed in the dark
trying to bud and bring forth new leaves.

I remember fall as a field of uncut hay
tousled like uncombed hair and
with stalks encased in frozen dew
that glistened in the morning sun.

To get home I do not use an astrolabe,
compass, chronometer, loran or GPS.
At night I just close my eyes and look
straight up at the great Northern Cross
of seasons in a north-country sky and say
star light, star bright, first star I see tonight . . .


FG 1 December 2012

All rights reserved by the author Forrest Greenwood

Happy Holidays from Thailand!  The Thai word for snow is “hema”.  That they have a word for snow is more amazing, I think, than the Eskimos who have so many words for it.