Once in a while, I like to post a poem, newly written, still carrying the frenzied fragrance of that first act of creating something seemingly out of nothing. Although it’s never quite nothing. More accurately, making a poem only requires an encounter: between the poet and whatever moment, object, person, experience arrests her like an eye suddenly pierced by the vision of rainbow lights in the night sky—yes, I was one of those who saw, from my balcony in Selangor, the dance of lights in the clouds some nights ago. Aurora borealis or not, the sight was a phenomenon fit for a poem. I didn’t write it, though. The poem for this post was written from another meeting, with a bird, more specifically a peacock who crossed paths with me at the KL Bird Park. Its hesitance to touch my space was matched by its interest to observe me from a distance. And me it. The first word that appeared in my mind when I was enjoying its presence was “coexistence.” Later, when I was writing the poem, I realised that coexistence was not simply physical but also mental, temporal, emotional (the peacock was so much more than something to “see”). The peacock in KL brought back the peacock I encountered in Tiruvanamalai at the sage, Ramana Maharishi’s ashram, nearly ten years ago, as well as the peacocks I met in stories, particularly mythological stories from India. The peacocks coexisted across my temporal-mental landscape (so much anthropomorphism, I apologise) just as I was coexisting in some form with the peacock in front of my physical eyes. On yet another level—a metalevel—I was at the bird park with my new husband with whom coexisting functions, at least for me, in a consistently revelatory mode: each day is a discovery in how to be in relation with another human being, in and through love, inclusive of bumps and surprises. It hit me fast, easily. Coexisting is the fact, the inevitability and also the challenge of living in this world. Being in coexistence: how to live it? By living it. Easier said than done but it has to be said. And done.
Then it struck me again, just as fast, easily. In responding to my environment and creating something out of my encounter with it, I was coexisting. Writing a poem is an act of coexisting. You’re carving encounters with words, even if it is an encounter between sections of your own psyche. “What’s your poem about?” my husband asked as we sauntered through the park. “Coexistence,” I replied without thinking. Later, I’d add, “I want to run workshops where people can feel their own power of using words to name all the ways coexistence happens naturally in their lives.” Which is what I’ll be doing over the next few months, with the support of my co-existence partner (I’m allowed the luxury of corniness as a newlywed). In down-to-earth terms, these are writing workshops; on a more elevated level, they’re time shared as we explore what it means to coexist through words. If you want to know more about these workshops, I’ll be happy to talk about them with you. For now, here’s what I made with words in my experience of coexisting with the peacock. Just click on the link to read the poem.
“Peacock”
I don’t see your pregnant blue,
the glitter on your neck
natural metaphors for gems, joy,
the hundred mythological
feathers my childhood produced
in print suddenly alive.
Waterfall water cloaks
my ears, reminds me
we have bodies,
still I don’t see
your dewy Indian miracle
or maybe I am seeing Ramana’s
bird, years ago, flashing
itself on ashram grounds
before my escapade into
a cave where a person
became a god.
It could be that.
How else would your colours
not destroy me into giggles,
into the awakeness of children?
Your beak kisses the tip
of water, dirt is nothing to you.
I watch you in a different sense;
knowing you are here
is enough to confirm
I am here.
We inhabit air
We share a life
forever, humbly,
in these five minutes.
Every lesson for this world is here,
lingering in the climate
around your hairdo.