Postcards chatter like sacred manifestations, or a series of snapshots of Divine Beings
internal to trees, planted around a grove's inner precincts.

reading the mottled text,
    shadows point to beings
    whose nature isolates

Almost noon, Sunday. Tree-mottled shadows spread over the pebbled pavement, as the sun begins to heat my back. I long to see the world as his Singapore was air-conditioned and pleasant. Mine was hot and crowded. His was the Singapore of great cuisine; mine was the Singapore of fried noodles and the amah's soy sauce.

Almost noon: Ex-Marshal, Will Kane, his new wife pleading with him for non-violence, must face four outlaws in the center of town, at high noon, as one by one, the townspeople excuse themselves from helping him. Thus, Gary Cooper plays the lone hero with no backup, in High Noon (1952).

his Singapore: P. Theroux, "Poetry Lessons." The New Yorker. June 26 & July 3, 1995.

a matter of time: When we trace our origins, we eventually arrive at the so-called Big Bang, and thus the question, If