to see the world

last year, for poetry month, Tammy Ho Lai Ming, editor of Asian Cha, offered to write poetry, for free. "Send me an email and tell me what you want me to write about. Or simply send me an image; I will come up with something."

what a beautiful invite, i thought. and wrote back. i immediately knew what the poem could be about: London - i was there the summer before, and Tammy and i almost managed to meet there. so i returned to the pictures i took, and sent some Liverpool Street scenes, plus the link to this London blog entry: "London - around the world in a day".

which itself includes a poem, one of the found kind, made of lines from that day spent around the world.

And what if
we miss each other?

And did you get what
you wanted from this life,
even so?

And is this the same
living and dying?

*

as it turned out, Tammy picked up on the first image of the blog post - a tube moment, and wrote the poem: "to see the world". now, in this month of journeys, the poem went live at 3:AM:
to see the world.

so good. all of it. how it all happened, and the images and words of the poem. especially these:

allow me to hold your hand amidst this flock of
chance passengers and passing chances—

if only to understand one thing:
that we can still the world
in an eternity of nano-seconds.

*
and an additional note: looking at those images from the day in London again, i stopped at the one from Liverpool Street. it's the one that i returned to this year in my photo files, when following the call for "Windows" by YB. and it morphed into the cover image there: YB Windows.