By Patrick Dougherty
She weighed less than a hummingbird’s shadow …
Words float to mind above the buzz
The ululations of traffic
Light glances soft off her eyes
As she blinks from the grit tossed up from the road
Blinks those eyes — eyes …
From my rickety table at the DMZ Bar
Rickety Hue
Hue
City of the citadel, palaces, temples, & the river perfumed
Night in June, summer night thick & sultry & dank
Scents of jasmine on the air & petrol
Sputtering mopeds flash by
Single rider, double, triple, & family
That’s when I see her
After I order my second beer & the staff set down yet another plate of
Roasted Spicy Peanuts
The simple armature of my evening – people watching & beer
Dislocated …..
Diminutive even for a child
She’d come up to a dwarf’s hip, perhaps
Barefoot, tiny, in faded red shorts & an orange tank top ripped a little
A bit soiled, dirty, a few scratches & a bruise on her forehead
How old? Miniscule, maybe 4, maybe 5
She walks along with this tourist then that,
A giant Australian
A heavy German
No words just an outstretched hand, small
Delicate as a sparrow’s wing
No one gives her mind,
But me
I watch one person pass & another & another
Still another
&
I act
I look at her until she looks at me
Akrothtes isothtes, the lilt of a Greek phrase ascends from some lecture buried, where?
When opposites meet
The old bald guy sitting there, traveler and teacher of English … ascending into an evening after a conference is done …
The tiny sprite so petite the refulgent wind from a moped seems enough to toss her
High
Into the layers of the night sky
My wife says I have kind eyes & I will my sprite to see that now
She does, maybe
& starts a shuffle toward me, uncertain, from along the street three meters away
A hesitant step
Like a fawn approaching an outstretched hand
Working against instinct
But desperate to believe
Mind willing movement
Eyes locked, she edges toward me as though through water, slow
A waiter & waitress spy her & begin
A practiced military action
To shoo her away
Two giants & my little Davina
I take out a 2000 note from my breast pocket,
About a buck & some change maybe,
I hold it out like Moses
& in doing so part the Red Sea
Before the sentinels can close
She comes to life electric
& flashes & snatches the cash
& withdraws
Quickly — retreating
To safety across the street,
Worried that the waiters will take it
Or maybe I’ll change my mind
I don’t
She stops on the other side
Looks back once
Then runs to a food stall under the Buddha tree
I look away, at the water sweating from my beer,
Listen as they play some cheap French pop on the loudspeaker
Decipher a word or two then give up
& when I look back my little Davina has a bowl of something hot
& she squats on the sidewalk oblivious
Of the giant Australians
The heavy Germans
Even the old bald American
As she scarfs from the bowl with a steel spoon flashing
A hungry little puppy …………
For a moment
I have the most beatific satisfaction I have ever had
From watching another person eat