Halcyon

Sher Ting

I write this poem to my childhood

to days spent chasing fiddler crabs over salt and clay,
sandals besmirched with sludge and memory

and days spent watching as a praying mantis
folds its limbs into a steeple in the abbey of a bell-jar;

to evenings doused in vinegar and olive oil,
my rising song a steady pulse with the
cleaving of chilli and beef

and nights asleep in my grandmother’s home,
5000 miles and an invisible cord to my mother’s lullaby;

I have watched raindrops on opened ground
and sunsets over fire-burnt skies

but I still fold my days into a prayer that I may
find a turquoise vein streaming through life,
threading living water and miracle
back to the heart of a home

that I may once again tread the foot-path that leads
to blinding un-purpose, untangling weeds and
swallowing the sun, bereft of obligation and
the shadow of responsibility

I am an October chasing January and its swallow-tails,
an inner-child with a withering flame
chasing a memory back to where it all began

and in blouse and billowing dress, on foreign lands,
I start my car, watching the concrete
asphalt bleed into dirt-veined tracks,

folding those prayers into paper cranes
like my grandmother taught me to,

that they may soar past the eye of my rear-view mirror,
above gravity

and float on home

---

Sher Ting has lived in Singapore for 19 years before spending the next 5 years in Australia for her college education. She has work published/forthcoming in Trouvaille Review, Eunoia Review, TunaFish Journal and Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine, among others. She is currently an editor of a creative arts-sharing space, known as INLY Arts. She tweets at @sherttt.

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