Turning 45 and a Haiku

Grateful to my well-wishers on Facebook:

Thank you for your birthday wishes! I had a terrific Day. Guy gave me a special breakfast treat - pastry and special coffee - and presented me with a chic striped shirt and neat blue jacket. Better still, he went in late for work! Then I worked on new posts for my arts website Singapore Poetry, before having a simple lunch of soup and cheese sandwich. After lunch, I started reading THE NEW VILLAGE, a collection of poems by Chinese-language poet Wong Yoon Wah, translated by Ho Lian Geok and Ng Yi-sheng. So much to learn about Singapore! For dinner, Guy took me to one of my favorite restaurants in New York, Commerce, on, you guess it, Commerce Street. I had a tasty Toscana and Guy an even tastier Rhone wine. My duck was delicious, just two thick slices, cooked just right, pink and crispy in the right places. Guy had a very flavorful curry with root vegetables. Then we had a couple of drinks at Monster Bar, before heading home. I feel very lucky.


*


In The New Village, Wong Yoon Wah mythologizes the struggle of the wild yam, the pitcher plant, and the mangrove to survive in a landscape dredged by British tin-mining operations and then abandoned. I am reminded of the restoration work now going on around the reservoir in Central Park.

each time the bridle path
receives a season of gravel
it grows potholes


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