Taproot

Taproot

Several hours walk outside of Bakau, dirt
track after dirt track and any tarmac
hissing with heat mirage. I pry
past the prop-roots of mangroves

into rusting wire and diamond
-link fence. A few robber flies
gem the air, and a brass band
hoots in the treetops.

So I force on into the junkyard,
flanked by weedburst wagons, a dog
asleep on one of the bonnets
or dead, and crouched by a fridge

half-naked, a woman. I feel
as if I'm watching Lawrence's
snake at his watertrough or
the reverse: her bending

to sort through a burlap sack
then her eyes white at seeing
me. But she waves and says
something I don't understand,

frowns, and walks over
easily, barefoot on muck and glass.
She hands me a broken plank
from her bag, then turns it

to reveal the pink
quill of an air plant threading
from its knots. I thank her,
hold my hands up, embarrassed,

and start on back, the cold coming,
to the strange warmth of the hotel.

*

I lie in bed and think of her.
I take the black root
of her offered hand, lead her
back over the dirt tracks

which sprout green under our heels.
The moon chases us and monkeys
weave through our legs or run alongside.
The door won't open for her

at first, so she lays on her hands
and the wood gives way.
I lay her on the mattress
of a riverbed

and when she speaks I understand
every phrase bursting in my head.