“Playing drums with chopsticks on a plate,

Summons evil.”

Revolutionaries cast in concrete

On the mountain of Hà Giang,

As if the opium of the past

Blends hard lines 

Into terraced farms.

Where a Hmong woman appears

From the mountainside

As if born out of the leaves and plants

She gathers, tied in a bundle, 

Held by calloused fingers,

Exchanging a smile. 

A water buffalo in the valley below

Veers his head looking upwards,

Annoyed eyes following a tourist’s drone

Ignored by the farmer.

The Lo river merges with the Red,

Past a Ðình-chùa, Buddha laden in gold. 

Incense sticks coil over,

Releasing essence in meandering smoke.

As women kneel for the morning prayer,

She invites the chime of the altar bell,

Waking the temple in reverberations,

Interleaving with her chant

And the cacophony of traffic outside,

Carrying their prayers in this

Morning tessellation. 

The Red dissolves into the vastness,

Where haze drowns sunlight

And cascading karsts

Erupt from the ocean surface

Fading as silhouettes 

Into the deep horizon. 

Gazing into the morning’s waves 

Gently rolling away, 

As if sucked into this illusion,

My heart sinks with the hull

Into its depths — the abyss —

Against this receding horizon.

Collected, layered impressions pull me back —

A wake of resonating ripples dissipates

Behind the women in white

Bent over in the paddy field

Conical leaf-hats hiding their faces.

Women in white áo dài walk in a line

In a vast meadow of orange marigolds,

Leaving behind a path 

Of lavender-purple poppies.

Young women in lotus pastels 

Release lit lanterns in straw hats,

Drifting away from the canoe.

Voices of scintillating spirits

Of butterflies from the past mellow — 

It’s time for healing.

Have you eaten rice yet?