Poetry from Thailand

Original poetry written in and about rural Thailand.

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Location: Chong Khae, Nakhonsawan, Thailand

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Would You Like To Have Lived Then?





With weather moving in, the artificial lights
in the old white building’s school room seem
to vie with the dimming light outside
for my attention.            
But I’m not interested.

My desk has an ink well.  I toy with the
small plastic ink well stopper, open and closing
it using the tin nib stuck in my plastic pen. 
The penmanship teacher at the blackboard is
saying, “and the bird flies from the ground up to
the telephone wire and then straight back down.
Good, now you try and don’t forget the little tail.”
But I’m not interested.

I’m looking at the cover of my book on the floor.
It has a Dick and Jane pair lying on a grassy bank
reading an open book.  Beyond them the bank
runs down to a river where a tall ship sails.
To the right a suspension bridge, half lost in clouds,
arches to a city on the other side and to the cover’s
left side a Medieval  army is marching toward
a castle in the distance with a pennant that
says: Would You Like To Have Lived Then?
I’m interested, but I have no idea.

FG 9/18/2014

I do remember ink wells and plastic pens with nibs that reminded me of a violin.  When Sheaffer fountain pens came along with plastic ink cartridges – a lot like the wax bottles full of juice you could buy at Pierce’s, I thought they were special.  Just to live in this time and this place is the important thing.  History is a fraud and the future is fraudulent.  Technology is a pipsqueak, God is transcendent.