I sit beneath trees
whose names I do not know.
Their foot-long spears
droop down around
miniature pine-cones.
Below a cloud-crammed sky,
Coles Bay’s waves caress starfish
on their trip to a shell-strewn shore.
Yesterday, when I strolled this beach.
I lent no eye to hanging spears
or needle-framed pine cones.
I chatted with new-met friends,
Ching and Langkham,
Heroes of the AIDS wars of Manipur.
They deliver lore, love, and sterile needles
to indigenous people beset
by epidemic,
burgeoning drugs,
and insurgents against a hated regime
who kneecap these hostages
of heroin-driven lives.
Yesterday, we chatted of shells, starfish,
and helping the hated.
Today, winds tickle pine-cones and drooping needles
while my friends fly home to mountainsides
where drugs, AIDS and hatred
are fed by the land where I live.
Sam Friedman has been published in TRP and many other places. His next poetry book A Precious Residue is scheduled to be published by Indolent Press in 2027.
