I stared at mangoes piled outside
restaurants as the morning pho

steamed into the street— 
the air like a wet towel

and a taxi driver said to me, as I sat in the back seat,
“We do ancestor worship here more than Buddhism.”

I saw the day go like a fig leaf against
a smashed wall in the old quarter,

lizards snaked around the calendar
as days mark the dead.

Back home now—the dead are with me  
in my kitchen—I love them all—
they play a trombone in my heart;

they play brush sticks over the skin of a drum
they tambourine the light on the wall
they swallow a sax whole.

So I’m arranging flower pots
on the kitchen windowsill.

So what if the sun is a pale circle
and the rhododendron leaves are curled
up like scared cats in the reeds.

I stick one candle next to the white
orchid with yellow stamens.
I stick another next to the pale green orchid

with crimson speckles.
I drape the philodendron over the yellow
pitcher my aunt brought back from Paris.

What’s ghostlier than gray morning winter light?
Still the glaze shines on the winding vines
of the ceramic plates from Jerusalem.

Candle-smoke curls around my sight of
two yellow finches perched on the feeder—

The cabby said as I handed him some bills:
“return your wood to the jungle—
candles will burn all year.”