sourcing

by Daphne Marlatt

     Note: These poems are from a series called “flights” written
     about not only my childhood in Penang (& the feeling of
     being both here in Vancouver, & there) but also my dad’s
     early years there in the 30s based on letters he wrote home to
     his mother in England.

oceans of clouds wet penetrant or penitent however we choose to see
what’s around or who’s walking suffused in pour underfoot or overhead
it’s wall–size Laiwan’s “fountain” origin frame some Summer Afternoon
shot five years after i arrived from monsoon rains knowing nothing of
West Coast clouds of history here
                                                          hot skin welcomes rain there

its ambulant glance a drumming overhead in yellowy light of oiled paper
his familiar face grins delight to grown child his memory revel this, this
is paying rain drops slide down kertas top its bamboo spokes radiate
old ways not his he learned on arrival where some time in the Thirties
he’d stay on

could not
                  given war, political shifts
                                                               economies’ changing hands
so Fifties departure to safer harbour here no origin point in time arising
earlier viaduct boats below on settler ground’s False Creek tidal flats
quick–quick industrialized it flows without essential quality eclipsed
in many oolong dregs of memory–float it’s demos skin soak drains brim
as too much coming down floods what was here