Poetry by Markus Hamence – Seminyak Bali, April 2025

She came when the air was thick with clove smoke
and the frangipani dreams hung low –
a dragonfly,
slipping through the hush of afternoon rice fields.

Her wings caught the chant of gamelan bells,
light dancing like spirits
on the tip of a bamboo offering.

I sat in a warung,
sipping tamarind soda,
watching her skim the air
like a brushstroke over green.

She wasn’t in a rush.
She was the hush –
between prayer and pulse,
between incense and thunder.

The farmers laughed in the paddies.
A rooster crowed like it had secrets to spill.
But she moved quiet,
gentle chaos in metallic blues,
a flash of ancient grace
in a world forever leaning forward.

She left with the breeze.
And the banana leaves whispered,
as if they’d known her all along.