The Insects of South Central Thailand

(dedicated to the Oregon poet Charles Goodrich,
author of "The Insects of South Corvallis")

The dragonflies are colorful
the butterflies even more so,
their wings like Darwinian flags
or Paul Gauguin paintings-
they can be seen
around Phetchaburi Rajabhat University-
sometimes hovering
toward the tops of 30 foot palm trees

There are mosquitoes
but very little malaria-
(and they're not so bad
kept in check
by diverse ceiling-walking geckos)

At the beginning deluge
of a flood,
I once killed a huge tarantula
wearing sandals
(there were little kids at hand
you understand.)
This seemed good to me
as I'd had doubts about my bravery

Another time,
hiking with a little boy named Tot
in the dry mountain jungle of Ganga Jan
we came across many large web spiders
including one whose body
was almost the size of a man's hand,
whose web spanned our trail;
Tot destroyed this with my bamboo staff
but the spider got on it
and we had to abandon it

That night by the lake
I got drunk on strong Thai beer
and retired early from the party-
a choir of frogs sang
and I accompanied them
on a wooden frog instrument
I'd "charitably" bought from
a hill-tribe girl with a small baby
in the street market of Chiang Mai

The next day I drank more
with a young Thai couple;
they were pleasant-
the man was an army cadet
who played the acoustic guitar,
very well,
and sang Thai folk songs
including one with only one word:
Tsunami

There were also shiny, flying,
many colored beetles
that made my letters home-
but their image and details
were washed from my memory
by bizzare and challenging times
in the U.S.A.

Yes, that's it:
Tsunami