In Tioman
I felt like a little girl on a pilgrimmage,
If you really
must know, for a poem. Like an obligation
almost,
to turn over the musty untrodden leaves, in
their gruesome
rest as has been laid for decades.
And there
find the truth eluded, as though the mysteries
of an old,
old universe were to be found in the decomposition
of an old,
old rainforest.
And when
I found none, no epiphany, no quiet reflection,
I first
blamed the natives for their barbed wire, rubber slippers,
shops manned
from behind the tired counters. But they were
uninterested
in fulfilling my poetic devices, and not as much
too proud
as too ambivalent to submit. I bought their wares.
I smiled
and toured their island. They sailed me around in motor-boats.
All the
while I felt dry and inadequate and jealous of the rivers
that flowed
down to the seas.
Jungles urban
or wild, just as untamed, I could not find
my conscience
there, nor my verbal being. Within my
thought,
my voice, my soul, therein lies this poem –
within,
of course, yours too.
