The Memory Of Boodie Poem by Vihanga Perera

How I remember you
Is how on an unmarked, now-forgotten
Thursday's eve about '94
As you stood -all your meat,
Curls, baggy clothes and wires
Hanging from ears as a part of pre-digital
Pre-ipod gears -at
A children's book stand in the
Old Vijitha Yapa shop (now no more)
On Kotugodella Street,

Smiling to yourself,
Lost in a bubble only you would appreciate to know
As the bookshop -dull, dusty,
Mundane concrete mass -welcomed
The odd pedestrian that had nowhere to go;
Smiling, flipping pages of a children's book:
A maker of films for one who
Cared to pause to look.

Two decades later, in 2012,
Your smile still lived -as it moved from
Page to page -and again I thought of you
From the window seat from where I looked
As the bus turned from Borella to Baseline,
And on my player as the song changed,
From nowhere came an electric thought:
Or, was it the music that had your happy smile engaged?


2019-03-25