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I love everything about this image.  

I spent a fantastic weekend out at Kanchanaburi- home of the famed River Kwai Bridge. We flagged down this woman to take us to the bus station, and were amazed by which the eased prowess her poodle (which she was obviously very attached to) rode. Standing in her lap, it used the odometer as a sort of platform for its front paws, head erect in the breeze, distantly reminiscent of an old ship’s figurehead.

So many things are happening in one seamless flow of events. The coming month marks the last of my years as a grade school teacher, but never say never again- right? I’m also fully engaged in plan-making. Plans for grad school, plans for the summer, and decisions for the near future. I enjoy the freshness of the process, but within it lingers uncertainty and hesitation, which are not altogether negative elements of decision-making. In fact, I feel that on some level they are almost necessary.

Plans are soon to be set in semi-permanence and I will tell you of these as soon as I can. Until then, I’ll leave you with something I’ve been working on for the past several months: I am attempting to capture the sensations and ambience of living in Thailand through my poetry as a means to preserve these relatively happy years of my life. The one I’ve selected, I composed while watching the evening sun set inside the tents and emerging stalls of the Lumphini Night Market:

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Bazaar the Night

Neon lights singe the pallid air
I sit and watch, watchfully set,
And stare, faces on a carousel
Swing around my chair.

Garlic seeps deep in my throat
As does clove, and pungent spices
As though to escape a fate
Left to wander by wind’s devices

Hawkers soon will call
but not just yet.
As you know, dusk lingers still like
Fading notes, a wavering quill

Some approach in pairs, alike in many ways
A silver salt-and-pepper set
Yet others by themselves they go
Enchanting- are they lonely?
Like you? Like me?

I think we will never know
Unless we ask of them who
They are and walk.
Alongside we go, into the entrails
of the night’s bazaar

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