On the Go

I had to jump like a monkey
To grab the dangling handles overhead.
My sister, two years older, only had to tiptoe.
By the time I reached the handles
She was swinging from the bar
On which the handles hung.

We spun around the poles
Until we got dizzy and had to stop.

When the train went underground
We knelt on our seats,
Cupped our faces in our hands,
Stuck our foreheads on the glass,
And became a part of the whooshing darkness.
There were little blue lights that flashed by
And the game was to exclaim
Whenever we saw the sudden spark.

We mimicked the announcements
In English and Mandarin
Fumbled with Malay
And giggled over Tamil.

Mom laughed at us, with us.
Sometimes she told us to hush.
When she stood up and went
We followed.
In those days we knew not
The difference between going
And getting there.

Children's song by Ronald Stuart Thomas

We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.
And though you probe and pry
With analytic eye,
And eavesdrop all our talk
With an amused look,
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.

The Gift

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he'd removed
the iron sliver I thought I'd die from.


I can't remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And i recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.


Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy's palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame,
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where i bend over my wife's right hand.


Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took his hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he's given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

(caroline)