Visit to The Nest, Speedy’s and Treacher’s at the Hill Station

Coarse grass grips the earth and the wild boars come

to root and rip at the tender shoots

shudder at the flies with dainty flickerings and grunts

Treeferns make their umbrella silhouette –

young ghosts of my father and mother loiter on their 

honeymoon maybe there are lilies datura escaped bougainvillea

Old panes flaking paint are decorated with a luna moth

and the red anthurium where the grasshopper rests its drowsy head

hovers in the mosquito keen of the cooler shadows

she has an Alice band in her hair and wears a green

polyester catsuit she climbs a mossy boulder

and they pose on the silver rocking swing

As hornbills clack at Speedy’s the house fallen to ruin 

the high call of cicadas rises to the sky clouds form 

coil lower here build the canyons in the air

the lovers watch a sunset sky over Taiping such a big peace 

such promises before their long journey down from The Nest

where maybe a muntjac deer barks in the early mist

Every afternoon weighs with thunderheads

that enter and dissolve the carved gullies –

rivulets of milk-tea froth at the base of fresh waterfalls

Iron earth slides down new shoulders of the hills –

it is the season when leeches sway in the foliage

their sensitive mouths seek warm veins

hands clasped  under the rattan palms and jambu trees

my mother listens to my father’s dreams and they have come true before, 

so why not? Darting geckos chase up rough trunks

The wind blows the veils of rain in their dance of hide-and-reveal

a pair of buzzards flap through the high oaks

a tree shrew scurries away the pitcher plants’ slippery bellies 

fill again ready to trap the straying ant with honey glands

at its pheromone lip nepenthes waiting 

now, who else wanders the gardens of drowned roses at Treacher’s?

maybe my father gallantly holds the umbrella

my mother senses shelter from the storm as they walk

past the kampungs towards the lights of town

The old tin mines of British Malaya are lake gardens –

names of captains of industry Maxwell   Treacher   Speedy

are overwritten with morning glory

while the bungalows crouch at the old hill station

full of rust and weathered board musical gibbon calls 

summon the sun open their sleeping shutters