THE BANGKOK LADY VISITS CHAMPLAIN

They find room for the English Department
In an old hospital with stone stairs.
The high corridors have institutional glass doors
With ventilation windows above and oak frames.

They move in and hang bulletin boards
In all the blank spaces on the yellow walls
And pin up stale posters and typed notices
Into the cork surfaces in a jumble.

Girls have on blouses and floor length calico skirts
Boys team jackets and caps with a mean curl.
Their young faces as they find their way
Into the ancient room are smooth and unworried.

She wins the National Award for 1991
And makes a living from it on the Visiting Poets circuit.
Statuesque she is born here but maintains
The Latvian spelling in her name and lives in Brooklyn.

A bleeding heart in the Vietnam War she visits
After it's over an extended writing project
As a white girl alone in a sea of yellow and brown
Sensitive to the various implications.

She treks in Cambodia through difficult terrain
With a guide distant through language and temperament.
On the last day at four in the morning
He takes her in the jungle for the wild monkeys.

They are both surprised at a remote track when he
Successfully makes his move on her in the dense growth.
On the way home in Indonesia on the tarmack
She hires a boy for her in just a T-shirt and shorts.

Back home considering the material she has collected
For her verse she makes the only decisions possible.
When it's over she fields some questions
In the brightly lit room with wide doors.

The parquet around the wooden floor is still good
But the most traveled portion is scarred through
By the rolling tables that transported them
Through the pain and confusion.

They break up abruptly after the handshakes
Heading out in a column under the lighted globes
While the host offers her coat in a wide gesture
Plus a ride to the place she's staying for the night.

10/23/97 Plattsburgh NY