HK Lights

The giant S in bright yellow of the Shangri-La next door,
The white rods chasing each other up the angular Bank of China tower

Like lightning bolts in reverse,
The horizontal bars of light that flow up The Center in shades of red and blue and green

Beautifully merging into each other,
The ugly white claws of Two IFC,
These are the views at night from Conrad 6005.

Jetlagged, I wake up before dawn.

Thankfully, Two IFC and most other buildings are dark
Allowing the gold and silver dots of the harbor to greet me.

Soon, clouds roll over from the west
Shrouding The Center and the nine hills of Kowloon in majesty.

The bright yellow S starts to fade
And Two IFC, still ugly, heralds the rising sun
With red and gold reflections off its glass.

Getting Older or Old?

Wrinkles -
They creep up on you;

The first time I saw them was a few years back
On my neck when I twisted it in some strange way;
Luckily, difficult to recreate.

Then I saw some today
On the bottom of my upper arm
The part someone nicknamed reverse biceps;
Again, only a brief appearance when I did something unusual.

On Sunday Meena and I were discussing hair coloring
When her six-year old Borun points to a black head of oriental hair
To show us the color of his hair.
When I reminisce that my hair used to also be that color he says
“But now you’re old”.

Old in Singapore
A city where the only old people are the really old Chinese men and an occasional tourist.

It won’t be long before we all get treated like the couple in the elevator this morning:
On entering they found that Level 1 was correctly pressed
But both the bus boy and I couldn’t help pointing out that the lobby was on Level 3
Just because -
They looked old.

Swimming Pools and Dragon Flies

It’s not that I don’t like the water;
I just don’t like to swim.

I don’t like water in my nose and ears
And if I let myself think too much,
I don’t like imagining all the fluids in the pool from the other bodies in it.

But this morning all the stars lined up and I got in the pool at the Shangri-La.

The changing room was close by
The water and air the right temperature
The morning shaded light perfect
And hardly any other bodies in sight.

So I lay on my back
Suspended in the water
Refreshed by the morning breeze
Surrounded by the fragrance of tropical flowers.

As I watched the clouds roll by a crescent moon
And followed the patterns of the palm fronds against the sky
I realized that if I lay perfectly still
Dragon flies will alight on me.