Another open house, searching for a home
(Peace, child, you are never alone)

In a strange mirror, how gaunt you’ve grown
(Peace, child, you are never alone)

You will reap the rewards of all you’ve sown
(Peace, child, I’ll be your home)

Saul Nadatas last blog post..In Baltimore

1.

Precocious reader, I found Kipling
early and loved him long.
Puck was my friend, Kim my hero,
but most of all
I heard the East a-calling
with the lovesick British soldier
dreaming of his Burma girl
in far-off Mandalay.

I saw the paddle steamers
and I heard the temple bells.
They have echoed ever since.

2.

I don’t even know, now,
how old I was so long ago
when my cousins from Burma came.
A schoolgirl, maybe nine.

Who fetched them from the plane?
Probably one of the uncles.
It was dark and the moon out
by the time they arrived
down Grandpa’s long driveway
with the orchard one side
the creek on the other
its tall stands of pampas grass
ghostly in the dark,
to where we were all gathered.

They were not Burmese,
they were Anglo-Indian like my Mum
(and her siblings too of course)
but they lived in Rangoon
a long time. Why did they leave
and cross the world to tiny Tasmania?
I don’t know that either.

They were magic, they shone.
They gave me a Burmese umbrella
red and lacquered, with black spokes
and strange white flowers painted on.

Now they are long scattered
and many gone.
Handsome Uncle Leo
tall, dark and thoughtful.
Aunty Irene, Mum’s cousin,
with her scented bosom,
her plump arms, her cornucopia
of hugs and sweets and old wives’ tales.

Joan and Anne, those beauties
disappointed in love, grew old.

“Little Leo,” the teenage cousin
I swore to marry when I grew up,
fathered six children
and watched them mature
to all kinds of success before he left us.
It was John, his older brother,
who did become my first love
when I was eighteen, he twenty-seven,
my first grown-up passion
surprising us both.
John with his alcohol problem
finally cured, his late, happy marriage
and later widowhood.

And Irene’s youngest brother,
Noel, known as Johnny,
who walked out through the jungle
when the Japanese came,
starving on wild berries
and was never quite well again….

It was Uncle Leo who told us
Kipling got it wrong,
in one respect only –
the pagoda looking eastward
was not the old Moulmein,
it was the Schwedagon.
We know it now from the news images,
pointed, and shining gold.

3.

My heroes are freedom-fighters,
champions of their people —
you know the ones.
Gandhi, Mandela, King
and that slender, graceful woman
with a spray of small white flowers
sweetening her hair.

All the years of her exile
to her own house in her own country
I have been sending her
anonymous love and prayers.

I met one who knows her well,
who told me that in private
she is earthy, a person who laughs.
Last night on the television
her face looked sombre, aged.

4.

Rangoon in the news glimpses
looks much like any city –
rectangular buildings,
asphalt, dust,
the golden spire half-hidden
diminished by shops.

The people mass. The people run.
The red-robed monks march slowly
to their deaths. A young woman
sits on the ground and sobs
defiantly, with her head up,
looking the soldiers in the face.
These are not British soldiers.

She is wearing red
as bright as new blood.
Until they silence her
she won’t stop yelling
the real news from Burma.

And the dawn comes up
on empty streets where the guns rattled
like thunder.

I would go there with my family
Head out into the water
Dodging the constant attack of kelp
Grabbing at my legs
I would hunt the crabs
As they burrowed downward after each wave
Smooth lumps under the slick brown sand
I would stand on the beach and let gravity
And the tide bury my feet
Sinking a little deeper with each new wave
Until I would lose my balance
As I got older I would move out further into the water
Working my way into the deep waves
Without the earth under my feet

After high school my friends and I
Made the trip to Mission Beach
In Darryl’s old Datsun pickup
With the Superman emblem
Painted on the hood
Diving into the waves
I landed in the wake
And left a long bloody scrape
On the end of my nose
I dived into the next wave
To wash it off
Surprised that the salt didn’t sting
We hit the Boardwalk
I rang the bell with the sledgehammer
Winning a giant inflatable crayon
That I gave to a kid
In the crowd that was watching

The last time I went to Mission Beach
I had just quit a high paycheck job
Without a single prospect for the future
I didn’t book a room
I just sat on the beach all night
And watched the waves come in
Feeling the moisture gather around me
Smelling the salt and damp life
Collect in the wind as it blew in
From the ocean

Once she had dreams of writing
Poems and making music that got
Lost in social peer pictures
Like sitting in a corner office
Making it big in the main stream
Her daydreams turned into planing meetings
And office homework, happy hour and
Merit raises leading to high-income praises
The cheap suit into high-fashion
Gaberdene,

before the merger that changed
The way the company would function and the dream
Rolled over into a back-room closet volleying
The not-so-occasional off-color joke
Made by the VP who thought it was his job
To make Her cry in the bathroom with wise silent sobs
Hiding nicely like a proper southern girl
While handling all the correspondance and
Transcribing notes to comply with Robert’s Rule
Expediting shipments, forecasting next year’s sales
Taking the heat when the salesmens failed
To deliver the goods to get the company out of the woods

Courage came slowly, it took years to get wise
The glass ceiling was real, no longer veiled before her eyes
Where to she queried the earth
I thought you’d never ask the earth replied
Take a look inside, you’ve always been supplied
With all the tools you need, you’ve never been denied
Access to the dream, welcome out of hiding
Take the spotlight, you’ll survive