My Doe-Doe Sweetheart

About this poem

Ode to My Better Half: “East is East and West is West; and yet the twain shall marry for the best.” In 1959, while a foreign student at Howard University in Washington, D.C., I met and fell in love with a Burmese-Karen fellow foreign student named Florence Pu with the given pet name of Doe-Doe (“Dao-De”), literally the manifested “DAO.” In 1962, I married “Doe-Doe.” Ever since, I remain perpetually with my my Florence Pu, with my Doe-Doe, with my Dao-De Pu, in enduring love, friendship and marriage, united as One. Interestingly, by grace of synchronicity, Florence Pu bears the maiden surname of “Pu” which, in the Chinese language means “unworked wood; inherent quality; simple,” an earliest Daoist metaphor for the natural state of humanity which Florence epitomizes with her humanitarian spirit. This 5-7-5 three-line syllabic meter Katuata poem is dedicated to our enduring fellowship and union. more »