Road to Sapa

Oriental landscape
The foreground is not important
Perhaps the branch of a tree or a stem of bamboo
We don't notice it
Our eyes are drawn to the middleground
to a tiny figure in a conical hat
a light blue blouse
the color of a robin's egg

The mountain in the background should suggest eternity
We should find serenity in the impression
the peasant is properly placed,
But the mountain here
can not hold

roar of dragon
raw earth
flesh of the mountain
fall sudden fall
mass fluid mass

The peasant in its path
runs as in a dream
They have exchanged places in time
The life of the mountain speeds forward
the woman's proceeds
in heroic slow motion
While we can only view
the terrible inevitability
of her death

Vietnam 1998: There had been a landslide on the mountain road earlier in the morning. When our van reached the landslide, the driver told us we could walk across and get in a bus on the opposite side. Along with dozens of travelers, I made my way carelessly across the mudfield. When I was seated on the bus on the other side, I saw two men bearing a bamboo pole over their shoulders with something heavy slung on it. At first I thought they were carrying a slaughtered animal, then I saw a man's swollen feet sticking out from under the canvas. As soon as the second bus had backed away from the slide and was headed up the mountain, we looked back to see an enormous viscous chunk of the mountain sliding down the chute that had been formed by the first landslide. People were running from the fringes of the mud field, but one Vietnamese woman was right in the middle, at ground zero. Though she was making a mighty effort to escape, her running seemed to be in slow motion compared to the speed of the fluid mass of mud bearing down on her. It swept her off the face of the mountain as if she were a small doll and she disappeared under the earth.