Singapore was in the news this week. And since Andrew claims this island nation as his home, I have traveled there multiple times. Until I arrived there I had paid scant notice to its location on the equator and what that meant beyond implicit heat and humidity. Unvarying, year round daylight/nighttime hours without any prolonged twilights or rosy dawns.
Tracking Time in Singapore
Jet lag paints my eyes open, unblinking
as a china doll tucked in bed, searching
for smudges of light still hours away.
Regimented days - twelve hours
of fierce sun, twelve hours of lampblack -
etched in island bedrock.
No pre-dawn display of color,
no lingering dusk, only equatorial
equilibrium orchestrated by the ocean.
The globe creeps closer to the same
seven o'clock sunrise snapping up
like a shade, day after day
as if government mandated. An intrusion
on my unruly northern latitude attitude.
Marilyn Aschoff Mellor
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