Highway 21

Rolled over the burning rice fields

And fields of smog

The gray mountains pose 

As only silhouettes could

In the long, dry summer.

The black-throated bushtit

Paints lichen Fauves,

A splattering of algae that

Feels displaced

In the hot straw-capped harvest.

The one with the scythe razes

The straw, on two-wheeled tractors,

The way the Scythians scorched

And starved

Darius of his conquest.

On a bus,

Past the curvatures of Khao Kho,

Little fires light the aisles--

Red lanterns refracted

On sheen, slanted windows--

Past abandoned bus stops:

The dark passes by.

No one hears

The sound of their sizzling

Or how they crackle at night.

Only the motor murmuring, 

The rumble that rolls on.

A man behind me

Answers the phone in Thai.

For the first time in my life

The pain of passing by

Cannot be held 

In the cushion concepts provide.

The stranger beside me

Is falling sideways,

Tears gorged in her drowsy eyes.

Her head rolls heavy on my shoulder,

The fires passing by,

All down the road,

Along the road where heaven lie.