Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Poetry 2018 | Page 101

Since youth she wandered fields and wanted more.
His words had birthed conceits no farm could sate –
To carry on would shake her to the core.
I need to leave, she thought, or I’ll begin
To hate the boundaries that rice plains draw –
To loathe the home that gave me life is sin.
“Naïve you are!” fell slack her mother’s jaw,
“Ungrateful daughter, nothing know you yet
Of fears unspoken lying still in wait.
A girl of thirteen? Trap’s already set –
Within the night you’ll be a fox’s bait.”
“But what about the fires?” she longed to say,
Her father’s hasty glare halted her tongue.
In truth, now not a thing could make her stay –
To dreams of journeys far her heart was flung.
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The village slept; and yet her mind ran wild.
Feet light, she rummaged high and low and lay
A sack on which her precious things were piled.
There was not much, she noticed in dismay:
There lacked for practicalities a tool.
This night would lift; her time was coming soon.
Her gaze procured an object on her stool –
Her father’s knife reflecting back the moon.
At first she wondered if it were misplaced,
For nightly by its master’s side it slept.
But doubt with surging warmth was soon replaced:
It showed her choice was one he could accept.
Internally she struggled, still untrained.
Her food would have to be just rice and grains,
Delicacies to salted meat constrained.
To cook: a piece of flint would soothe great pains,
But choice was not a luxury she had.
In truth, she cared about not what she ate,
Took pains instead to tuck away a pad
Of folded paper, yellowing of late.
The pages: they alone survived the flames.
The angry blaze she watched ignite the streets
Inferno rising to the skies untamed –
A fatal wall of fury, no retreat.
Three years, yet images still burned her mind.
Three sheets of gold once bound into a book,
A book once held in hands that underlined
Each spoken scrawl, deciphered with a look.
Alive he was the wisest man she’d met.
Bespectacled and looming tall and proud,
The Councilman was kind when plains were wet
And let her in to hear him read aloud
A tale of myths and legends, told in rhyme.
He’d gifted her the pages on the day
When ten she turned, and bowed to seize her time.
“I promise you” , he’d said, “that come what may,
I’ll teach you how to read and write and see