I’m still living now,
not as prey or victim.
This isn’t where.                                    I’m most needed.
The mind is everything,
allowing it to come to me.
Witnessing, my own soul.
This is where, I’m needed most.

The petals fall on Mount Yu,
and the orange coloured
sand on Fulong beach.
Waves of heat, as magpies
twitter at twilight.

An island, churned to hope
by flames from the sun.
An endless weaving of uneven water.
My mind is gone, rolling in
from the kenting waves.

Sunshine at dawn,
facing a lily.
A sea returning,
deep in raga.
Each day, an island
shows its face.
A wind, more
than a whisper
Waiting for me,
to give it life.

On this island,
I disappear inch-by-inch.
A deep fragrance
of plum blossom,
mingles with childhood dreams.
Each step, I see sundogs
on the spring horizon.
No longer just bodies for sacrifice.
But hands to the sky,
sent by blue magpies.
One migration day,                              after the other.

A spring longing,
most days now.
The sea roars in
and lies on a Taiwan lawn.
Silver sunlight,
giving life to uncertain legs.
And in this corner
of Kaohsiung City,
a piano hammers- barely
moving space and time.
As I watch a river,
entering a new sea.

Outside, thorny stems
with few flowers in bloom.
Each wound, moving                                    deeper and deeper.
A barren land,                                declining the sun.
But as night falls,                                         a slow slip from a soft sea.
A single trail of hope                              with forces of life,
and a legend returns.

A mountain wind,
the stillness and silence
of old Taiwan trains.
Bits of chained metal
disappearing each day.
Let death be, on an island
or in a pond.
Just funeral money.

A poem I wrote about Taiwan, my adopted home..right now.

I walked the streets
and wondered….
‘what is a history,
that can’t find its life?’
Living on this island,
our island, their island
my island.
I find an age to adjust
and bear the heart.
All of us, consoling
the spirits of victims.
Yet, flowering to the ocean
with total recall.
A salty sea, with salty tears.
Refind at will, speaking at will.
With no wasted residue.
A metamorphosis of sorts.

A poem and picture from a difficult day.

Memories, now with
such vague images.
A red-haired woman,
now grey and blurry.
Old wounds, still
waiting for payment.
And me, no longer embraced
by people in the tribe.
Yet, still the colours detectable
and migration days
still to come.

Stuck to this island,
a crowd of umbrellas
hiding from a sunlit wave.
A cat’s memory,
begs to be fed.
The deep reach
of plum blossom.
And whalebones, washed up
on a Kenting beach.