Baumbach Witness

From where he lies, I see
the crumbling walls of the bungalow
where his mother kept wake
from his death to hers.

Buried (as young as I am),
he has gazed at the tea plants
where frost curled the feet of leaves
and of the bamboo basket-wearing mothers

for a hundred and forty-five years.
Last year he saw the only school being swept
downhill and three men, still at the club,
being buried in the avalanche

of mud and water and the remnants
of lives previously witnessed.
Even in that rain, the red and white bougainvillea
flowered over him — a canopy of death.