It’s your first week in Bangkok.  We go to Wat Pho monastery
to hear the chant of evening prayers.
With shaved heads, repeating words in ancient Pali, monks,
in saffron rows, sit
in lotus position on a platform along the room’s far side.
They live at the wat, not with their families. 

Before you arrived, a Navy Captain invited me to a family
khao bodt celebration.  A young sailor was entering a monastery
for a year—briefly setting his navy career aside.
I saw monks shave his head and give prayers,
and his family’s happiness as he faced them sitting
for the first ceremony for becoming a monk. 

We’re on mats in the center of the room, listening to the monks
who, by their ordination have brought honor to their families.
Legs to the side, you sit
next to me on the floor of this public room, a bodt.
I try to look comfortable cross-legged as we listen to the chants,
and to distract from myself, I point to the Ramakien murals beside you. 

September sunlight slips through windows along the room’s right side
illuminating the Buddha statue in front of the monks.
An elder with wire-rimmed glasses leads the chanting. 
Near us, middle-aged women members of a family
have come to visit at the monastery.
A nun dressed neck to foot in a white robe sits

among them.  Seeing a farang couple seated
nearby, she offers us tea from the pot beside her.
You wouldn’t see tea cups at home in our sanctuary.
Her close-cropped hair is unlike the shaved heads of the monks.
This generosity to foreigners is a lesson noticed by her family.
We smile our thanks.  A small bell ends this chant. 

A few words from the elder and they begin a new one.
In a circle of women, the nun shifts her seat
to direct attention of her family 
across the room to the monks’ side.
Their level tones lift briefly as they chant,
a slight lift in the focused life in this temple. 

You left home and family to be with me.  Now, sitting beside me in this bodt,
listening to the monk’s chants, is it obvious I’m trying to make this fascinating?
Tonight I will ask you to make this life with me.

What you first notice,
his hands cracked and battered,
in places raw,
from dredging oysters,
his bare living,
from the bottom of the Chesapeake.

Scarred by the Chesapeake,
nails missing or broken, you notice
one fiercely black. A life
in salt and sun, battling
the toughest months, he harvests oysters
for Baltimore’s linen-covered tables—raw,

on the half shell, silver-smooth raw
softness that belies Chesapeake’s
icy keep of oysters.
The hands you see
steered his weather-battered
skipjack while dredging for living

delicacies; rough hands taking silky, living
creatures. Today is cold and raw,
and it’s Christmas. He’s here in his battered
truck—though he was earlier on the Bay.
He’s pink-shaven, and we see
he’s bearing a mason jar of oysters

like a glass chalice, for our oyster
dressing—a gift from his living.
In Rumbley, people barely notice
him, his manner direct, even raw,
tutored by the Chesapeake
like other oystermen in the same battle.

A finger was long-ago broken
by a winder raising an oyster
dredge from the Chesapeake.
It set badly—part of the living.
The Bay’s lessons are raw.
His handshake is the last thing you notice.

After talk of arsters, he rises and, with long-ago Chesapeake manners, makes the toast.

To this house and family, to friends living and dead, to those battered by life,
we’ll see you ashore. This whiskey, it seems, has found the raw spot in our throats.

Before sight and sound
and the naming of things,
their measures;

before light and dark;
the face on the deep; the waters:
there was silence.

Not the same as the moment
jagged after
of summer lightning,

or a rock face tumbling
from winter ice,
the click of a gate latch.

Silence is where everything starts.
It’s two men in a boat, mist-early
on a lake. Surrounding them:

water sky-dark and still. In time
early light will thread from the trees.
For now, cold damp nests in their collars,

and the smell of black coffee
in dented thermos cups
sits on the bench between them.

Begin with silence.
Wait for light,
as when praying.