A poem takes to Sky

A poem takes to sky

by Judith Huang

for Nii Addo

Sky happened today, in the middle of the black night
With my gentle radio, sitting crossed at the computer. Sudden patch of sky!
Loved it, loved it. It was a stretching of arms over water
It was a canopy space above my roof
It was arching like a sprout of water!
Loved, loved it. It was you laughing, over the wires
It was white slipping over night
I imagine hawks holding trees
Twirling the world slowly in strong talons,
Racing pylon cables crashing through the seas.
Every word of yours is exclamation, they say, Look! Look!
I have never been
Happy before. There are better places. I wanted to pack my things,
I wanted the smell of coats, the screeching of wheels
Against the tarmac floor; I wanted wings,
Wings to soar. I wanted to cut the sky in white lines. Teaching
Me new places. There was a smile
a mile wide on my face. A swaddled coat with woollen collar over my dusty skin.
I’m growing thin, I can hear my heart hammering through the wool.
We will one day live off air, just air
In a suitcase.

Nii Addo is a Ghanian British guy I met in 2004 in Lumb Bank, Yorkshire, England. This poem I wrote in response to another poem he wrote and sent to me. It was the first poem I ever published in my time at Harvard, at a little mag called the Harvard Ichthus in 2005/06, my freshman year at college. At the time I didn’t set much store by it, but if you read this article, you will see how it became the most important activity I took part in while at college. You can read what I’ve written for the Harvard Ichthus at my author page here.

Ghana just won the World Cup game against the USA today. We were watching in a Mexican (they are from Puebla) restaurant called Habeneros, which was excellent, then watched the last bit at the Hopes’. Big disappointment, because this means the Americans are out. But the Ghanians were really the better team.

You are the Weakest Link. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

Oh Kevin! You were so cute, and Bill Gatesy, and I liked your apology to the Native Australians. Also John Howard was not all that likable for all his fiscal responsibility. But you spent all our surplus and put us in deficit, and were doling out all our resources boom to various random causes (including, and I don’t even know how this was ever a good idea – giving the largest car manufacturer in the world a subsidy to invent a car that had already been invented!)!

Watch this amazing video!

Also, Australia has a female PM. And Kevin Rudd is Out.

Her name is Julia Gillard, and from what I’ve seen on TV, she’s pretty impressive. Watch out, world.

America, you’ve really got some catching up  to do now.

from Wikipedia:

Julia Eileen Gillard (born 29 September 1961) is the 27th Prime Minister of Australia.

Gillard became the Leader of the Australian Labor Party at the 2010 Australian Labor Party leadership election on 24 June 2010 and was sworn in as prime minister later that day. She had previously served as Deputy Prime Minister of Australia under Kevin Rudd. On 11 December 2007, she became the first woman in Australia’s history to assume the prime ministerial role when she was the acting prime minister while Rudd attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali.^[2]

Of Australian prime ministers, Gillard is the first woman, the first foreign-born since Billy Hughes,^[3] and the first who has never married.^[4]

Gillard has been a Labor Party member of the House of Representatives since the 1998 federal election. She represents the Division of Lalor, west of Melbourne.

Here is an article about her

Photo from Wikipedia. Photograph by Adam Carr; Cropped by Orangemonkey.

Going back to Midwestern Roots

…. I did not know I had.

How is it possible that one house in Iowa built between 30 and 13 years ago with an extension that was envisioned with cutting edge software to determine all the views should closely resemble in spirit a house built in 1993-4 in Singapore to the uncanny extent of including

1) a koi pond, with little Japanese stone lantern
2) a patio deck overlooking said koi pond
3) two dogs who rule the house as their demsene
4) treasures/trash from travels around the world but especially southeast asia
5) 30 years’ worth of packrating in the basement, which is an ever-expanding entity that causes the youngest daughter in particular some anxiety
6) 1900 photographs of Asia in 2004, the last year my family lived in Singapore
7) the most beautiful views from Faber Garden apartment, the place I spent 1/7th of my childhood
8 ) chicken masala with egg noodles
9) a map on the wall of the eldest son’s circumnavigation of the globe
10) two ivory staffs my grandfather left when the mother of the house was 13 or 14
11) a photograph of my great-grandfather, Wong On, with 5 children – we still can’t establish which 5, and his wife, whose eyebrows are perfectly symmetrical
12) three beautiful grown children, one of whom married a Thai, the other who married a half-white, half-Korean, and another who is single in Minneapolis who loves movies and books and hanging out with friends and has a half suitcase full of shoes

At dinner we sat down, and I said, truly, all of you are of my people. Then we went out for ice cream at this place called Whitey’s. It was SOOOOO GOOOOOOD.

Life is mysterious and astonishing and wondrous strange, as usual. Or so they say.

During Chinese New Year 2004 we met. I was too much of a self-absorbed 18 year old to remember much of that CNY, but we did, here is the photographic evidence.
Photos (c) 2004 by David Hope.