07/25/26 A New Poem for a New Day

(Today’s poem is a follow-up from this poem last week:)

I built my home
Where the river pushes
Its racing waters
Into the peaceful ocean

Where people sell
Their renovated traditions
To eager tourists
To afford their shacks
On the side of palace ruins

Where the birds chirp
And monkeys cry
Warning of my coming

Where my friends
Want to meet in malls
So AC can temporarily remove
The sweltering heat from their lives

Where everyone compresses
The same wheat, corn, and sugar
Into wildly different dishes

Where they bestow me
With precious mass-produced knick-knacks
That I now must press into
My swelling suitcase

Where I see a new Sisyphus in each place
Rolling a different rock
Up the same mountain
For me to ask whether he’s actually happy

Where I guess good food
Unable to find it again
Amidst the foreign script on their menu

Where a good hotel
Gives way to a bad hotel
To eventually give way to a good one again

Where people ask the same
Three questions about where I’m from,
How long I stay there,
And what I plan to do

Where apples cost
Yet bananas are somehow
Always cheap

Where uniquely majestic birds
All become endangered
By our cats

Where some are afraid
To take their leap
And others too far gone

Where people work
Six days a week
For a monthly income
Less than my plane ticket to get there

Where the swelling waves
Of curiosity, creativity, and exhaustion
Create the eddies of my life

Where my shirt dripping in sweat
From a ten minute walk in the humid sun
Reminds me that here
Even the little things are exertions

Where the stories of
Others constantly remind me
How I can’t write my own

Where places
And hikes
And dives
And histories
And cities
Never end,
Always another “and then”
And then, and then, and then
Until even the “and thens” have their own “and thens”

Where every adventure blends into one
In the horizon beyond
My closing eyes

Blast from the past:

I have come bearing
A warning of grave danger.
Too bad I forget why.