The Sunday Poem: Driving to Tainan

Tainan is a city in Taiwan, by the way. 🙂

I came all this way to visit New Jersey:

Blank concrete barriers under smog,
Highways robed in rice paddies.
Granaries coated in rust rust
Idly. Trade rice for more
American grains, and this drive
Is one more trip through waste, waste
Of nature, of wild.

The city Tainan is strokes
And motorcycles, a rush to buy
And sell. Here, there, everywhere
Adolescents gather, girls to giggle,
Guys to pretend.

Down an alley we find a square,
An empty lot loomed by cosmetics ads.
Plastic sheeting circles plastic tables,
A sizzle of shells, sashimi and squid.
The fish eyes are everywhere, and
Taiwan beer tastes very familiar:
Perhaps there is only one beer, and many bottles.

A man at the next table is,
For a moment, my friend Will, the artist,
In every detail but eyes,
Hair, beard, chin, cheeks.
The recognition of his laugh makes me
Laugh, so I inhale differences
To exhale similarities.

So, then: there is no where, there.
There is only who, and when,
And why, and the answer
Is always.

–March 24th, 2000