Two Poems: The Country that Slips through My Fingers

AT SEA

From the bottom of the closer ocean I scrape
the sea into a plastic bottle let   its unknown conlang speak
            above me when I go
                        under—
here in this one place a rise accessed by braving
a sudden deep the sand
            is spindrift escaping
                        when I come up
not for air but to pour liquid the color of my skin
            into the thin mouth before the next swell
                        sinks me

My brother says there is enough on the beach along with
rare island shells beach towels an American frisbee
I brought home as a gift for his daughters—

            It is not the sand I seek
it is the turbulence of my agglutinative tongue now digging
in defiance of viced currents that pull me
            further than I have gone   further
                        than the country that slips
                                    and slips through
                                                my fingers

AFTERNOON CITY FAR

One breath    Listen in then out
toward another life
removed

It comes to me now as in other times
un-indentured I lived    All children
are such    Raised off that sudden perch

into tenuous air and flight
we leave    She left    Fair passage
they said offering no word

of what such exchange meant
Or means now looking down vertiginous
onto an old country sought

its diffracted waters neither storm nor haven only
a familiar strangeness to its curve On land
foothold for a monkey god footprint of a Buddha

left engraving the impermanence of solace now
and at the hour of our death uttered inside
hymn-girded chapels such crossroads allow

no rest for a traveler Swept beyond limits
Look there is nothing there
is nothing there
nothing

FURTHER READING

“Words for Sri Lanka: The Heartbeat of My Country,” by Malinda Seneviratne