Loei, Thailand
2004

Two Seasons in Laoland

Dry

Fields are brown
where they have not been blackened
by fires red in the night
choking the sky with ash
that does not fall so much as float
drifting down in bits like night's inchworms.
Even the sun looks burnt
setting orange too soon
through the molten air

Rainy

Flooded fields
reflecting green reflecting green
tender rice
and hillsides feathered with bamboo.
Clouds wander in companies
or lazily rest
mist cloaking mountain kingdoms
where imagination rises like a river