Laburnums

When I first moved to this city,about a year ago,it was a little past peak summer and the laburnums were fading out of sight.

It's peak summer now,and they are in full bloom in the courtyard outside my room when I wake up on an obscure May morning.They're so familiar,so close,unlike the ones I used to look at from behind car windows while we drove through streets whose names I did not know.
I pack my life into a cardboard carton,seal it tight with space just enough for whatever will happen in the year to come.Staring at the dusty duct tape shadows that remain on the wall above my bed ,after I've taken my posters down, fills me with a profound sense of loss for a second.

Like the laburnums,
so much else has blossomed,
blossomed with metaphor,
meaning blooming
like annotations around a poem,
handwritten interpretations unfurling
like petals out of printed verse.
So much has withered,as well,
so many friends,so many dreams,
so many notions that used to be.
Black and white binaries aren't for me,
I understand neither extreme,
I've learnt that to let something grow
you have to inevitably let something go,
a friend once said to me,
"you grew,they withdrew."
if you love,you will love to know that you'll lose,
if you don't lose,how will you ever find anything you
love with that intensity again?

You're the laburnums,
firework,transient spark,
chandelier,crystal clear,
reflective,fragile,sharp.
But poster-less,whitewashed walls
and flower-less green foliage
can only mask
that you've been there,
not that you'll arrive again.

Wonder

What I'm most afraid of is waking up one morning,aged fifty five,having lost all sense of wonder for the day ahead of me or the world that awaits me with all there's left to learn.I'm hardly an adult now and on some mornings,I already wake up having no sense of wonder for what the day could unveil or the people I could meet.I know everyday cannot be exciting and monotony is an inevitable part of life,there's only so far away you can chase it before it creeps back in,in one form or another.

I'm not afraid of ageing or monotony,I'm not even afraid of mediocrity..these are only the limited and limiting constructs of a hypercompetetive society.

I am afraid of losing that phenomena,

where you discover a new word and then you see it everywhere-it pops up on your social media and on television drams or when you notice how fascinating someone is for the first time,and then,they seem to be everywhere you look.Almost serendipitous,like writing a poem about a moth and coming across a poem you wrote about a moth three years ago,based on a memory about moths from when you were three years old and you tried to contemplate the wonder of life and death and all the unanswerable questions fit in between infinity,at the sight of a lifeless moth lying on the floor.Wondering if you should be happy or sad at the sight of the moth.Watching the marching band,with white hats outside the window and car with flowers cello taped all over it,even its windscreen,wondering what the music meant or what the beat of the drums taped glittery blue,meant.Finding old posts of moths on instagram.A chain reaction,butterfly effect from one thing that you are fascinated by.

I want to never forget what it feels like to look at someone and wonder how it would be to kiss them or hold their hands,I never want to stop looking for little whirlwind galaxies of water draining from a bathtub.

It does not matter what this wonder materialises into,that's the best part,it's not about the materiality or even some kind of self-rewarding,self-actualised concept..it's just that

the childlike wonder of finding a pink bead in your shoes,or a shard of broken bangle or teacup in the sand of the playground,pocketing a feather or a dandelion blown by the wind,watching a lime green caterpillar in the corner of the swimming pool or hearing the word "kind" for the first time and imagining what it must mean,something like a kite,one of those things that fly? It must be blue in colour,it sounds like a blue glass window or the sky.

Sometimes,not even a physical treasure to stow away in a box,just a string of thoughts all woven into each other like a intricate lace labyrinth.

Wondering is just as important as knowing and if language is symbolic of how me construct our worlds,we're learning to wonder through words every moment,although we've been wondering from before we had the words,for we've had symbols as thoughts to articulate wonder with.

I'm afraid the more I know,the more I might kill wonder and forget that there's infinite realities I cannot fathom.On some starry nights,I forget to look at stars and feel,not insignificant or inconsequential,but infinitesimal and this worries me.I don't want to swallow yellow paint of being consumed by everything I know,even when it consumes me like an ocean wave I didn't anticipate because there are almond blossoms waiting to be awe struck over and written about with wonder.