rumblings of the past...

'At this place
there had been a big mango tree...
and there...
where the telephone tower now stands
so abrupt proud
like a monster...
was a temple...no doubt...
not those you visit
in the city
full of italian slabs of marble...
not that kind...
no pomp and gaiety...
but a simple one
made of burnt bricks
thin and red...'
He said,
my father
who had become a child
after coming to his homeland...
his blood line...
old ancestry
where had written down a lineage
covered by dust and cobweb...

I looked at him
my father
turning a child strange
curious..nostalgic...restless...
shoving off leaves of past to trace
where his father...my unseen granddad
at the end of the day sat
pulling a puff from his hookah
smoke through water
making sounds...
and a pond by banana grove bound
had coolest water with shades
dark and deep and like plates
flat round green lotus leaves floated there nonetheless...

'At this place
my mother paddy straws laid
with a ladder she would here seperate
husks from grains...full of dust
she would sing a song of dusk...'
My father continued
in his dreamy vein
walking he was...surely down his memory lane...

and I could perceive how little things sparkled
at the corner of his eyes where past with present met...
and he became a child, didn't he?
In his eyes saw childish glee
as he touched the ground with his palm
collecting small red pebbles some...

'we used to play with these like marbles
aiming and throwing them at sticks
and tell
who amongst us would be a good shot...
in which palm tree someone would tie a pot
to collect sap so sweet like honey
in which hole in the woods there lived a bunny...'

My father kept on murmuring soft
when the moon light on his face dropped
a stream of conscious unconscious rumble
a child like him with words fumbled...
and I listened to his narrative echoing across
and noted how the heads of coconut trees tossed
gently as if in full approval of happenstance
of gigabytes of memory engaged in a dance..

'At this place...'
My father was in a neverending flow
time clocked backwards gradually slow...