Learning Thai Staff Forms in the Rainy Season
*For Kru Nham and the drumming class at Lanna Wisdom School.
Bare feet on sweating concrete
Bamboo staff in sweating hands
Tropical thunder steals my breath.
My hands know the moves but my feet forget
My feet know the steps but my hands get confused
Hands and feet learn to follow the body.
At the side of the temple, a row of drums
At the end of the row, a rack of gongs
Body learns to follow gongs and thunder.
Breath follows body into the motion
Spirit follows breath into the form
I pour my self into an empty vessel
and own its shape.
***
Hood to Coast via Council Crest
They ran the Hood-to-Coast relay today
while I walked: Goose Hollow to Council Crest
and sat on a dry hillside, facing west.
The Coast Range hills were hidden in white haze,
the blue-sky substitute of summer days.
The relay’s first half was by then at rest
or cheering on their teams. My solo quest
circled the hill under Mt. Adams’ gaze.
Roll on, the relay; run to the ocean’s strand.
From the Coast Range crest, see how the light
gleams differently on Pacific sands.
Salt air greets you coming down from the height.
Drink in the ozone-touched oceanic chill.
My heart goes with you from this sunburned hill.
***
Salute to Peter Norman
Did you step in where angels feared to tread?
Did you speak up where lesser men had said
it’s not my country, not my business, not
my job to stand up. History forgot
the third man on the stand in ’68
a man who stood for fairness, against hate.
It cost you. Recognition didn’t come
although you’d brought Olympic silver home.
It’s tarnished now, as metal always does
and fame has faded, but that never was
the glory in your crown. The badge you wore
that day beside your medal kept you poor
on earth—but now, on Heaven’s vault behold
your name in letters wrought of deathless gold.
***
Tiel Aisha Ansari is a Sufi warrior poet. Her work has appeared in over a hundred journals and anthologies including Fault Lines Poetry, Windfall, an Everyman’s Library anthology, and The Strategic Poet, among many others. Her collections include Knocking from Inside, High-Voltage Lines, Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare’s Stable, The Day of My First Driving Lesson, and Dervish Lions. She has served as President of the Oregon Poetry Association and formerly hosted the Wider Window Poetry show on KBOO Community Radio, https://www.kboo.fm/program/wider-window-poetry. Visit her online at: knockingfrominside.blogspot.com.
