When banal Winter headaches overpower all chance of sleep,
I walk my retiring but forever curious day-ghost
back along the petrol-fumed blare of 屯門公路 Tuen Mun Road,
consoled by the narrow nature-strip-haven of wild weed-life
which extends tenuously the whole way to the 藍地交匯處 Lam Tei Interchange.
There, echoey stairwells and lifts backhandedly bless
a remnant spot-grove of trees that correct with their flowers’
rock-drilling fragrance the concrete cold science of yellowing blueprints.
From there I go on past descending twin staves
of the light-rail line that promise in vistas such mild infinity
and that come, now and then, back to life — steel-hissing —
as a barrelling hybrid half-tram half-train rockets briskly out
to 元朗 Yuen Long. Then, without fuss, without weak second thinking,
I leave to its own devices the bolted-down track
and turn off to the left at a leisurely angle
where a metre-wide slip of fresh water still rivers
an ample flood-channel’s rock solid dictation
just enough for a miracle fish or two to swim by in
and where even, white egrets stake out meagre prey
through famished bird-hours of patience. And alongside this,
rubble and car-parking lots. Opportunistic new flats
stacked up inside bamboo scaffolding. Uninhabited containers
mid-dreaming vertigo’s maritime upsurge and swell
the full length of rust-scabbed and corrugated panelling.
The screech and snap of power-tools. High-pitched
jet-engine whine researching for the skies
over 青山 Tsing Shan Mountain. Dull unmusical traffic
prowling 五柳路 Ng Lau Road, which means,
ironically meaningless now — for the trees were battered
to wood chip long ago — “five willows”. But then
again for the first time I hear direct out of ringing, thin air
across the felled courtyard of the bare 前陶氏宗祠 Tou clan temple
the commanding stern rap of an expert drum
beating grand, final rhythms from deep — deeper — blood
and it is here, in the playground of the otherwise deserted Tuen Tsz Wai school,
that I see with disbelief, roused from workaday physical torpor,
the electrically steady line of wide-awakened lion dancers
dressed in bright yellow silk pants and embroidered cloth shoes,
astonishing the bruised wasteland, as the tall men among them
weightlift effortlessly their slighter, more agile companions
vertical against gravity’s press and hold them up trophy-wise
over their heads — one second, two seconds, three seconds, more? —
before, synchronized, pouncing them deftly back down
to Earth on nonchalant, grounded soles, pawing and ready
instantly to take the next step, through the late noon atmosphere
we all breathe in and the quasi-Summerish Autumn sun’s heat
that makes each and every one of us sweat from outright planetary joy.
Chinaman Creek 