[Poem] To Relatives I Never Knew

By Sanzu,by Styx
Or a nascent Laotian rivulet,
I pray, to whoever is in charge of such things,
That after a turbulent lifetime
On these teeming banks
Crowded as the ashen Ganges,
We will recognize each other,
Indeliberate strangers that we were,
And understand.

II.

Beneath a cleansing icon of lovely Mae Thorani
With what passes for new family for a new land,
She rumbles to an obscure saint of speculation
“Maybe you were all petty demons in a past life
I swept away without a strain, a thought.”
Filthy, nameable, mere, finite among the infinite

One fine winter in the tropics before a Nak prince
Was reborn as Buddha.

III.
The Drowning God keeps busy.
He has an ocean of second-hand memories
No one gets to see.

His fluid voice smothering,
He pretends he can never hear you
Amid the many worlds’ tears.

“When the waters are high, the fish eat the ants. When the waters are low, the ants eat the fish.” -Traditional Lao proverb