Grace Chia
Before Paradise Is Lost
On the way home
my son and I spot
a squirrel on a tree
hugging a fruit, its jaws
gnaws it down to seed,
its feet clasped to the trunk
defying gravity like Spiderman
suspended at right angles;
eyes bright, tail startled,
body brown as bark.
In plastic playgrounds,
my son chases butterflies
nectaring on ixoras,
he shoots water guns at
red soldier ants refusing
to drown as a lemming line of
the black garden kind queue
for a Chupa Chups slowly
melting into soil.
We’ve seen cousins
of Godzilla slithering their tails
up the walls of our home
or caged for a parade in zoos,
or basking wild in the sungei canals
of muck green we can’t quite call
a river or a stream;
a majestic monitor lizard,
tongue long as a whip,
hide thick as tarmac,
amphibious as Merlion.
Tonight the cold is stirring
through a congealing air;
kamikaze moths are back,
night flies singe their wings to light;
mosquitoes await in the dark
like vampires about to feed.
As the meat sizzles on the pan,
I watch the blood ooze to a clot while
my son crouches in his room
playing huntsman, a glass becomes bell jar
to trap a winged bug he calls his pet.
I wonder how long the bread he
feeds the diptera will keep it
alive, or will it be driven mad enough
to escape and attack us as we feast,
us humans with our titles and rights
to an island we think belongs to us
and not them, oblivious to creatures
that too inhabit this space?
Have we mammals forgotten
the prehistory of origins predating
the migratory boats of our two-legged
ancestors who turned this jungle
as concrete as paradox?
My son sees his world more
clearly than my myopia,
he feels the heartbeat throbs
through the unheard sounds of
bees and ants no bigger than
a fingertip even as I file
down my line of work daily
like a machine. He teaches me
to smell the roses brewing
in every tea leaf I steep
stirring my soul awake as
I relearn how to infuse and uplift
my life with my child’s
wide-eyed, unspoilt nature,
even as the day turns dark
and something tasting of a storm
in the unmoving wind
churns steam to a rising cumulus.
