Gerry Jacobson

Paradise Lost

I embrace the softness of Sabah. I notice pregnant women and I’m attracted. And babies: how people love them ostentatiously, celebrate them, kiss their toes.  The Kadazans do this, and so do the Chinese, the Malays, all the Borneo people.

awake
in the bird-ringing dawn
reaching out
to the woman
beside me

We conceive our daughter in a Singapore hotel room. She’s not exactly planned but it’s our biological time. There is nothing conscious about it. My conscious mind is focused on geology, climbing, fieldwork, the next expedition.

touching
a loose boulder
moving
around it delicately…
relief and gratitude

There is one more expedition together. Rae is four months pregnant when we walk the ancient trail over the range to Ranau and Tambunan, the interior of Sabah. It’s the Easter holiday, and our last chance to walk there before a road is built.

A month later there are race riots in Kuala Lumpur and things become uneasy in Sabah. People we know are locked up without trial. Meetings are banned, and the newspapers and radio are censored. I am asked to investigate water supplies for a remote island, proposed as a prison camp. None of my local colleagues will do this job. I go out there and report that there is no chance of a water supply.

Daughter is born in September, and our assignments end soon after. Affected by the ongoing tension, we don’t renew. We pick up our baby and leave.

for fifty years
that recurrent dream…
endless packing
mislaid passport
I miss the plane

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About the Author

Gerry Jacobson lives in Canberra, Australia, and can be found writing tanka in its cafés. He was a geologist in a past life and now celebrates reincarnation as a dancer.

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