Kelong by Boey Kim Cheng
My father hands me over the sampan's dipping bow
to the boatman's leathery hands sitting me in the stern;
he eases beside me and you know he is in his element.
The boat is turned, the engine gunned
and off we go over the thumping waves.
My heart heaves as the hull leaps and dips
from choppy swell to swell, and for the first time
I taste the sea, the spun salt spume spraying
our faces, the last light gilding my father's frame,
his image spectral almost, hovering.
His eyes are fixed on the distance, buoyant, free
from debts, going for the big catch. The kelong
bobs into view, a fishing outpost staked out
like an oil rig with huts and walkways,
all stakes, stilts and slats cane-lashed
and-trussed naillessly to farm
the sea. The boatman slows his craft
along the landing stage, cuts the outboard
and tosses up a rope to berth. I am relayed
by tremendous fisher hands to the dipping raft
of sun-warmed boards, trailing my father
on trembling legs up the timber planks
to the kelong compound, my head reeling
from the lurching waters
tilting the horizon end to end.
My father carries me into the hut
where I sit and find equilibrium
on a floating world of water and air.
The smell of salted fish everywhere
and through the gaps of the worn timber floor
you can see the threadwork of the tossing tides
and imagine the kelong's legs stretching
miles to the ocean bed. You feel the pulse, the tug
of the depths at the kelong frame and wonder
if it will hold. Out in the dazzle
my father is talking fish talk with the kelong men
and I see him for the first time
at home, as he is not on dry land,
at the helm of his life for once, the water
a safe distance from horses and drink.
Later I learn to trust the aerial walkways,
fit my tread to the swaying sense of things,
the planks bending but holding firm with each step
and I am walking on water, a weekend
of buoyancy with my father in the watery realm.
After a dinner of fried trevally and rice,
a Conradian moment when the owner tells
how last monsoon a storm blew this way
and lashed the kelong till it groaned and keened
and came undone. How he held to a steadfast
stake and lived to tell the tale. The voices
bob and fade above the lapping waves
and I fall into tidal sleep, the moon
dragging shoals of light across
the kaleidoscopic aquarium.
The kelong is hovering in a realm
neither water nor land, loosened
like a runaway zeppelin from the ocean's dream,
trawling nets through currents awash
with stars. I keep still beside my father,
afraid any small step may capsize
the moment, halt the slow drift to a place
that is neither up nor down, present nor past,
the certain sensation between father and son
that each lives and stays in the other.
In the middle of the dream I wake
to my father's tug and we are out
on the platform, the hurricane lamps
illuminating a theatre of catch and haul
while the sea watches in the dark.
The nets are reeled in, like a retiarius
ceiling, and there is a heaven of fish
heaving, thrashing scales, and mouths
agape in hosannas of death, all winched
and dropped on the floodlit deck.
The men fall to their fish business,
wading with buckets through the gleaming bounty
picking prawns, squid, whitebait and trevally
all kicking, the deck thrumming with last gasps;
only the jellyfish are flung back to the source.
In the morning my father shows me
a starfish and some seahorses, souvenirs
I deposit back home in a pail of water.
For weeks I will them to move,
loosed on the currents of my five-year-
old mind. They disappear like my father
into a sea where all the lost things are.
In my dream I cast about for the word
that will reel in the sea hoard in one haul:
starfish, seahorses, and my father.
Analysis of Kelong by Boey Kim Cheng
The poem, "Kelong," by Boey Kim Cheng recounts an interesting fishing adventure between the Boey Kim Cheng and his father.
Boey Kim Cheng recalls that he was five years old when his father ferries him in a fishing boat to kelong.
It is, however, Boy Kim Cheng's first time. As the sea waves heave, Boey Kim was terrified, but he notices that his father does not show any sign of fear.
The light that shines on his father as the boat moves gradually away from the land makes Boey Kim's father appears like a ghost.
This interests Boey Kim more about the sea. As they continue rowing the boat, Kelong comes into view.
According to little Boey Kim, he describes it as an oil rig. The physical structure of Kelong is mysterious.
More mysterious is the fact that Kelong is in the middle of the sea where there is high tide.
When the boat finally reaches Kelong, he alights and follows his father with trembling legs.
Being to the sea for the first time, he is, however, dizzy. Boey Kim thinks and sees his Kelong as a different universe until his father carries him into a hut in Kelong.
As his father carries him, he finds comfort and protection from his father in what he directly tags "floating world of water and air".
In Kelong hut, Boey Kim pondered over Kelong's physical structure and how the water flows freely beneath it.
Boey Kim also notices that his father is conversing with one of the fishermen in Kelong.
He discovers that his father is very comfortable in Kelong, and this is described in the poem as "at the helm of his life".
The poem makes reference to "horses and drink", which offer more deeper meaning: Boey Kim's father might have encountered life challenges on the land, but on the sea, all those problems seem to have vanished.
Staying on Kelong appears to have terminated the fear of the sea, though at first he is afraid of walking on the Kelong.
With time, however, he learns to balance his feet and walk freely, as if he is "walking on the water".
The sea and Kelong aid in providing more father-son relationship growth. Little Boey Kim avers: "a weekend/ of buoyancy with my father in the watery realm".
Later, they sit for dinner. It is after dinner that the Kelong owner narrates a tragic story of how storm destroyed Kelong on the previous monsoon.
According to the owner of Kelong, Kelong "groansd and keened" when the storm roared.
Kelong owner survives mysteriously by holding firmly to a strong stake. Boey Kim is lured to sleep as he listens to voices and waves.
The moon that shines creates a beautiful "shoal of light" across the water. It is more of a dreamlike to Boey Kim, who is on "neither water or land".
Sometimes Boey Kim Cheng is afraid that any little movement may "capsize the moment" with his father. He desires to share more moments with his father.
"The certain sensation between father and son/ that each lives and stays in the other. "
To Boey Kim Cheng, the experience on Kelong is extremely wonderful, a moment that memory will always bring.
After sleeping for a while, Boey Kim is woken up by his father to witness when fishermen bring the fishes which they catch.
Boey Kim notices when the net is pulled in. The fishes are much on the deck. He observes quietly how the fishes struggle, move, while others die abruptly.
The fishermen separate the fishes accordingly: sprawns, squids, whitebait, and trevally. After the complete sorting of the fishes, the fisherman disposes jellyfish by throwing them back into the sea.
His father surprises him when he offers him a starfish and sea horse. Boey Kim takes it home, put them in a special pail of water, hoping that the starfish and sea horse will move.
Now, in his adulthood, Boey Kim Chen desperately desires to bring everything in the past to present, for he has lost everything: "starfish, sea horse, and my father.'
The poem Kelong by Boey Kim Chen is centered on fishing adventure which little Boey Kim experienced.
Themes in Kelong by Boey Kim Cheng is focalized mainly on father-son relationship, fishing adventure and memories of the past.
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