About Me

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I live on the ocean, write women's fiction, love to read so much that it's an addiction rather than a hobby (I read an average of a book a day). I live on the wet west coast so it's a good thing that I like to walk in the rain.

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

The Bamboo Chair


This poem is almost exactly 10 years old - I think it deserves, finally, to see the light of day and so you are its very first readers.

The Bamboo Chair

He lives in a bamboo chair
carried on the shoulders of black-clad women
their feet bare and cold on the damp jade grass.

A god? Not exactly.

But a man so overwhelmingly fertile
the earth blooms unnaturally
beneath his feet
in rafts of red roses
florid yellow chrysanthemums.

It has always been thus
from the very day of his birth
and he’s used to it
now.

The adulation, the shouts,
hollyhocks thrown at his bamboo chair.

He’s learned to ignore it all
to keep his eyes resolutely
fixed on the backs of the women who carry him
learned never to step from the chair.

He often thinks
being a god would be easier
to be able to leave this place
where every molecule conspires against him
multiplying in his presence.

The women who carry him are ageless
and tireless
and silent
they shoulder his chair and walk
one step at a time
on a pre-determined path through the world
never passing the same place twice.

The chair has always been his home
his feet are as soft as his unworked hands
he eats a morsel of food, placed on his tongue
and it multiplies to satisfy all his needs
except the most urgent,

The cool dampness of the jade grass
against his untouched feet.


Kate

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Nice.....