24.12.24 - Poem to Christmas in Singapore

 

Love how the lens flare did this...

Poem I wrote earlier...

Christmas 2024

There are no solstices here,
No equinoxes, no quarter days,
No falling leaves, dropping flowers,
No harvest festivals, no planting times.

Instead we have this eternal summer;
Some days do be wetter than others,
Some nights, a cooler breeze sweeps after;
The bulbuls, sunbirds and orioles
Nest build all year long,
In the gardens, hunt scaly lizards
And wide-faced frogs.

This is the other world I walk in
The one which saunters in the
Other life of my psyche,
Even when I bless the return of the sun
I know in this other world it went
Nowhere.

It did not slacken its course,
Never gave up on its stride,
It never needed a sacrifice,
To cajole it out of hiding:

Its tale was that of endless bounty.

A kind of paradisical eternity
Inhabits the other side of myself.
One, which when I walk,
Recalls the time this concrete path was once earth and jungle,
One that knows, that one day it will
Revert to jungle,
And then the birds and lizards and frogs
Will once more revel and celebrate in innocence

This forever summer which
Has always been and will forever be,
As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be,

World without end,

Amen.