Bright white eyes glare
Into the Eastern darkness
Red tails disappear
Amber beacons signal Westward
Betraying a change of heart
To the North or South electric blood courses
The veins of Great Father’s prize
Circulation Urbaine
Tag: Vietnam
Fansipan
On the final resplendent day of the season
You were with me close to Heaven
Saying:
The clouds drift like ancestral ghosts watching
Over the jungle, the nomadic river and bending rice.
I agreed. Who would challenge an angel?
This close to God
Before winter wrapped his misty arms around Sapa
Lao Cai
I.
On the slope the fog creeps
Over trees and houses with slow surety
A cataract hides the world
In pearly white blindness.
II.
From the high, blue jungle
perfumed with wild spices
The long journey begins
for twisting strands of silver
returning to the sea.
Golden Elephants and Silver Birds
Wind and current wrinkle the surface,
motionless as the cracked skin of a
parched desert.
We bank and catch the full fire
of the setting sun and the Pacific transforms
into the hide of a golden elephant.
Another turn loses the light and the water is
pachyderm gray capped with tufts of white.
The ground and its toy houses are almost in
reach as we descend like a silver bird returning
to the green canopy of home.
John Truelove 