Sam Plummer
Torrential, sun-streaked
Drawing across the paddies like a veil
Buckling banana leaves and awnings.
Kaleidoscopic pagoda roofs cascade into lily ponds
Nourishing paddies, revitalizing rivers.
Life-giving and eternal.
Torrential, lightning-blitzed
Smothering the city like a shroud
Scattering motorbikes and lives.
Thundering off veranda roofs to shatter the neon reflections
Flushing sewage, plastic and dreams.
Dark and ominous.
Torrential.
The monsoon tests our lives.
Washing our bastions downstream
to be reclaimed by culture
reclaimed by nature.
It’s torrential outside
sisyphean and miserable.
I shouldn’t be alone.
I should be with family, friends
comfort and cheer
to deflect the hopelessness
of building monuments in foreign lands.
Instead, a pen and a bottle of whisky.
Who else can save their souls? Save mine?
