Retired banker in a nursing home

you’re late he barks.

What branch are you from?

I try to humour him,

this man, unknown to me.

but humour’s been withdrawn

such insolence! i’ll put you on report!

another day    concluded

doors              closed

books                         balanced

but his mind is on probation

a life ledgered in ink of red

or black

his accrued capital

white-anted

grey matter

All these years accounting

for every detail

Now he’s overdrawn,

unable to achieve

a final balance.

Vietnamese dragons

I dream of dragons, smooth and scaled,

all kinds of dragons from welsh myth to Puff. And when I awake in the hotel room in Huế there is the dragon fruit centimeters from my face in the bowl of tropical fruit, a gift from hotel staff when we arrived yesterday.

today we walk to the Purple Forbidden City, see dragons  painted on the roof, as statues, on walls, etched on enormous ancient bronze urns and we spend the whole day wandering the deserted site

carrying the backpack with the fruit in a plastic bag.

at lunchtime we climb the stone tower and sit cross-legged with our backs against a giant bronze bell and cut the dragon fruit into halves. What a fantastic thing. A fruit designed by a committee, the colours of a watermelon turned inside out, the centre like poppy-seed flecked
ice cream.

like that pink 70s Hare Krishna candle we kept at the shack for power failures, intricate as an Indian temple in jelabi colours, sliced and twirled, and every heatwave it softened & leaned a little more one way,

a subcontinental Tower of Pisa.

we eat it to the rind

leaving pink stripes in the white

with our bottom front teeth, looking down on the moat

in this land of dragons

© Copyright, 2013, Rob Walker.
All rights reserved.