Poetry from Thailand

Original poetry written in and about rural Thailand.

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Location: Chong Khae, Nakhonsawan, Thailand

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Moments Of Beauty Belong To No One



It’s a fall afternoon in 1959 and I’m
standing in the unrented upstairs
apartment in the Bagnall’s home
on South Mast. Clark’s working
on a Heath Kit shortwave radio
and tolerates my company, but his
focus is on the tubes, condensers,
and sundry other parts.

We’re in the kitchen and I walk over
to the sink, try the water, but it’s not
turned on.  I go to an open window
and sit on a steam radiator below it.
A half mile to the east, there’s a soccer
game at Barnard’s.  For the first time
this year there is a definite chill in the air.
The playing field is in sunlight, but the eaves
and the house are creating an unwanted,
irregular cold shadow on the lawn in front
of the brilliant scene. I hear the crowd
on the sidelines roar, but the sound is
delayed like the report of thunder after
a lightning strike.

Over fifty years on, I wonder why I
remember this moment.  It has no
particular significance. Yet, it hangs
in the empty rooms of my mind and
will not let me leave.  I am neither
here nor there, no longer a boy and
not yet a man.  There is a home-town
roar, and I look out the open window. 
Something good must have happened,
but it does not belong to me.




FG Tuesday, July 23, 2013

All rights reserved by the author Forrest Greenwood.