Love Story Series

 John and Tolly Hicks

 

 

Treasuring Time with Tolly

 By John Hicks

Tolly (Charlotte Eberly) and I met in the swimming pool of our apartment complex in Greenbelt, MD in the fall of 1969.  I was a newly minted Army lieutenant stationed in Washington, D.C. and she was a junior at Maryland.  We dated until my orders sent me to Bangkok in March 1971.  Though we exchanged letters, I missed her and asked her to marry, but her mother opposed it, So I asked her to come to Bangkok.  She arrived in September and I vigorously showed her around.  We married in a civil ceremony a week later, first in the local district official’s office, then registered it with the consul general at the embassy, and finally a month later in the Anglican Church.  Life there was like a two-year honeymoon.  We were married for 52 years—until her death last year, two days before Thanksgiving.  These poems are about our first two years of marriage.

 

Letter

Two women wearing rice field hats
watch me from behind twin pyramids
of garlic and onion piled waist-high
above swatch cloths on the ground.  

I’m wandering through light and shadow
of the irregular colored tarps,
the roof of Bangkok’s weekend market,
wondering at saw-horse vendor tables—

some piled with exotic fruit,
or ginger root, and vegetables,
and burlap bags that overflow
whole clove, allspice, and black pepper.  

Both sellers and their shoppers turn
and briefly pause their bargaining
to watch this farang looking around,
someone they’ve never seen before.

In Thai I ask the names of fruits.  
My use of tone surprising them.  
But I don’t know the dialect
the pyramid ladies speak,

so others translate what they ask
and my response about the poncho
I’ve bought for upcoming rainy season.  
Smiles and nods.  All understand.  

Nearby, someone’s selling chiles:  
the prik-i-niews piled on saucers
for a simple balance scale;
the large ones grouped in threes.  

Ahead, steam drifts a vent of sunlight
a wok nested on a brazier.  
The gray-haired woman fans the coals
to make it bubble, beckons me

and ladles out a red sauce sample,
a bit of meat, a kaffir leaf
onto an enamel plate of rice.  
Her smile crinkles above the dish,

and like any grandmother, nods
that I should try it.  People smile,
wait to see what this Americans
thinks of their food.  

As I extend my hand for it,
I think of you;
you with your now free weekends.  
We could share this.  

 

Special Days

Particularly on special days you’ll see
people go to the street of flowers—
where farangs like me
buy roses and orchids—

special days like birthdays
or when a young man
enters the monkhood,
they buy jasmine garlands

to grace the spirit house pedestaled
in a sunlit spot outside their home.  
It’s well-known that offerings
of flowers, food and incense

attract favorable spirits;
that special offerings encourage
them to join in family affairs.  Here,
the short-haired elderly woman—

she lives in small a room
off my landlord’s summer kitchen—
tends the old-style spirit house
inside my gate.  I see her every day.

Tomorrow you arrive on Pan Am One.  
To make your welcome perfect,
I’m buying two garlands.  One,
I’ll bring with me to the airport.  
 

 

Do You Know Why I’ve Brought You to This Place?

It’s your first week in Bangkok.  We go to Wat Pho monastery
to hear the chant of evening prayers.  
With shaved heads, repeating words in ancient Pali, monks,
in saffron rows, sit
in lotus position on a platform along the room’s far side.  
They live at the wat, not with their families.  

Before you arrived, a Navy Captain invited me to a family
khao bodt celebration.  A young sailor was entering a monastery
for a year—briefly setting his navy career aside.  
I saw monks shave his head and give prayers,
and his family’s happiness as he faced them sitting
for the first ceremony for becoming a monk.  

We’re on mats in the center of the room, listening to the monks
who, by their ordination have brought honor to their families.
Legs to the side, you sit
next to me on the floor of this public room, a bodt.  
I try to look comfortable cross-legged as we listen to the chants,
and to distract from myself, I point to the Ramakien murals beside you.  

September sunlight slips through windows along the room’s right side
illuminating the Buddha statue in front of the monks.
An elder with wire-rimmed glasses leads the chanting.  
Near us, middle-aged women members of a family
have come to visit at the monastery.  
A nun dressed neck to foot in a white robe sits

among them.  Seeing a farang couple seated
nearby, she offers us tea from the pot beside her.  
You wouldn’t see tea cups at home in our sanctuary.  
Her close-cropped hair is unlike the shaved heads of the monks.  
This generosity to foreigners is a lesson noticed by her family.  
We smile our thanks.  A small bell ends this chant.  

A few words from the elder and they begin a new one.  
In a circle of women, the nun shifts her seat
to direct attention of her family   
across the room to the monks’ side.  
Their level tones lift briefly as they
chant, a slight lift in the focused life in this temple.  

You left home and family to be with me.  Now, sitting beside me in this bodt,
listening to the monk’s chants, is it obvious I’m trying to make this fascinating?  
Tonight I will ask you to make this life with me.  
 

 

The Lighting of the Lamps

                                            Bangkok
                                          Hot Season

                                                        Sunset
draws in slender silk across the Chao Phraya,
fades into the rice fields of Nakon Pathom,
the forest canopies of Kanchanaburi.
We like to watch from our veranda, this light
that tugs the tips of coconut palms spaced
along our compound walls.  It marks the time
the housemaids leave their cool rest on the lawn
for indoor twilight to light the lamps.

The shelter of routines made it easy
to slip into this life:  Bangkok
wrapped in three seasons, where
we slipped away from your family’s
almanac pace; your mother’s refusal
to allow you to marry first.
    

 

Here 

light and dark on polished floors quiver
lines like shadow play.  Hard decisions
are wick-soft as we await the evening breeze
to cool the house.  And when we retire,
the only light will be above the gate
where the night watchman will strike the hour,
matching the lazy pulse fanning us
as we turn beneath the sheets. 

 

 

Immersion

                                              Bangkok,
                                             Hot Season, 1972

Newlyweds,  we’re exploring our new life.  
Over dinner last night, a Brit neighbor
told us about a street near Erawan Shrine
where the shops sell only religious items
for Buddhists.  We want to see it.  

In this part of the world, you buy tires
on the street of tire stores; for furniture,
it’s the street of furniture stores.  For a gift
to a temple, or to a nun or monk, for your altar
at home, go to the street near the Erawan.

It’s hot season. We choose an air-conditioned shop.  
In front, by the windows, it’s all statues of Buddha,
some standing, some seated on carved lotus bases.  
For cool season, there are cloths to drape them.
And stacks of saffron-colored robes for monks.  
We move up and down the aisles.  Lots of brass,
like these strings of bells, and candle holders.  
There are boxes of candles and incense sticks.  
Lacquered tables and wall altars gather at the back
of the shop near a cluster of embroidered ceremonial fans,
each upright in its teak stand.  And gongs.  
I’m standing in front of the gongs.  

We’d heard one at Wat Po in cool season
when we went to hear the monks chant
evening prayers.  Only heard it once,
struck softly: an intimate sound that faded  
after it got our attention.  

The clerk, in white shirt and black pants,
attending with an usher’s reserve, holds out
a small striker to test the gongs.  I settle on one
with a sound I like.  It’s bronze and heavy,
painted black, a lotus design etched on the front.  
He writes the order on his pad in Chinese characters,
then carries it to the sales counter.  The young assistant
in black skirt and white blouse, cuts brown paper
from the roll using small scissors like ones I remember
from grammar school.  He lays the gong face down
for her to wrap and tie up with string.  It’s like
an old-fashioned department store.  

We removed our shoes at the temple door,
and sat cross-legged on woven mats
on the floor of the main chamber.  
Late day sun peered through tall windows;
took its own mat.  I thought
of the sanctuary of the church at home.

Joining a new world, you compare
each day’s experiences to what you know.  
We are deliciously lost.

“Letter” was published as “The Test” in Verse-Virtual, “Special Days” in Eunoia Review, “Lighting of the Lamps” in San Pedro River Review and “Immersion” in River City Poetry