Catholic Seasons In Singapore Poem by Bernard Henrie

Catholic Seasons In Singapore



I exchange my bamboo fan for a Swaine Brigg
umbrella, Prince of Wales model.

the waiter nods off, the cook turns newspaper
pages; an immobile cockatoo tucks his sea-green
head under a dark wing.

The orderly bus queue forms; rain squalls soak
my book and lump of colorless tie.

I carry a forgotten rosary, an overlooked scarf;
walk to the school where we learned French,
sit with your near deaf mother- -read
at the wine shop, elbows, on the domino board.

I thought you would appear, change into a bathing
costume at the river; move your journalist’s desk
next to mine once more; my hope- -
black smoke rising from a Vatican chimney.

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