Overseas Love Letter to Taipei, Taiwan
A poem about my first time traveling overseas
--
Cabin fever is twelve hours on a jet plane.
Time suspending my disbelief
that happenstance carries meaning.
Featherlight accident of birth.
Return flight: Taipei to San Francisco.
My father to my left.
Stranger to my right in a darkened
jet plane where cabin fever has meaning
and does not have meaning.
Already, I miss the strange intonation of Mandarin,
hearing without understanding much.
Instead of loneliness, a welcoming dish of spicy fried
fish with friends, new yet familiar in a city
full of trees with foliage, like kindness, dripping.
At the restaurants we shared
course after course after course.
In Taipei, for company
there must be fish and pork.
20 dishes spun round the wheel at a table
with just as many friends.
Here we are, heading back together.
My father to my left.
Stranger to my right in the darkened
cabin of a jet plane, one of many planes this year.
The year my wings have unfurled, taken flight into my wanderlust,
nothing less than my right of birth.
Delicious as jellyfish and abalone,
mochi and beef noodles eaten clumsily with traditional
chopsticks and a spoon — xie xie, thank you.
Taipei, already I miss you.
We set wing above the sea,
leaving and returning, returning and leaving.
A salty depth of longing,
beating ache of my heart
for new passages
again and again.
