For Uncle Dong Fei Who Just Keeps Going

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From Noise from the Laundry, published by Talonbooks in 2008.

Uncle Dong Fei is 104, fragile in winter. He has it
standing still, those shakes in his
bleached red-gnarled, soaked-to-the-bone son of a
laundryman’s hands—
a committed Christian whose YMCA-sponsored wife
back in 1920 was the talk of Chinatown—
and I ask him how old he is, really,
and he just laughs, waters the African violets
in his room and lets me feed him congee with
oong-goo and mook-ngee.
My father brings him
a plastic cream cheese container, full of tofu jello,
home-made au-foo fa. “Mm heck-uk, can’t eat so much,”
Uncle Dong Fei protests,
waving those thickened calluses and bleached nails.
He still starches his own collars, irons and presses
his 6 shirts and 4 pants on visiting days
when we can watch him. His eyes brighten
when the nurse brings in the iron and ironing board.

Look, listen, and learn, my father seems to indicate, by
the way he leans forward. Uncle Dong Fei
takes a giant gulp of peppermint water
and spews the finest mist cloud from his lips.
A rainbow leaps up and leaves its arc.
He begins ironing as the droplets
fall on his sleeve, his chest pockets,
the detail
around each cuff button. His early shakes are
stilled and purposeful, the hot iron’s prow glides over a white sea,
looking for refuge, unwrinkling vastness
as it goes along,
and his ship never stops curving in spite of itself,
and I think of rescue within rescue
because there must be a point to this, and
Uncle Dong Fei,
Uncle Dong Fei who just keeps going.