Kuta (Bali)

Catharina Boer

-for Jimmy_

Fresh flowers at my feet,
gift for friendly gods, trampled,
dried out in a day.
Scattered the ashes as a surprise
on our guileless path of the deads.

Here the smell of decay, as
from old churches, short lives, herbed,
oiled while coming, going. Only
sea is timeless, the noise. I within,
making up far beaches where children

also are selling poor goods,
when he cried: Ma’am, ma’am,
your shoes, therefore toiling through
the waves, please ma’am, sea is high,
foam in his hair.

He rubbed them dry, caught up later
about his beads, jewellery for nearly nothing,
for money to study, dream in his eyes
that also had been saved out of waves.
Left, in his cloth his little sorrow,

I’m Jimmy ma’am, remember me.
Pink, the evening, a resting sea
repeating herself to sunrise.