SOMEWHERE BOUND boey kim cheng
(for a traveller)

I didn't know how to talk to you.
You, so far away, but leaning
into me, your face framed
in the opening of the well
I'd been brooding in
for years. This morning,
caught again like a bird blown
off its tracks, bowed
like the tree I was sitting under,
by the same sky, and all beneath it,
I knew, for the first time,
the mystery in the way a ship moves
over the sill of the horizon.
Someone was towing it effortlessly
to somewhere which we call port.
I knew also that I too was moving
in that speechless field, and even if
I found the right words to shout,
it wouldn't break its vow of silence.
You had that lonely look
I must have worn this morning
and I, like that ship,
somewhere-bound,
afraid to wave.
I fumbled for a word.
You turned back, and then,
turned away forever.