(no subject)
The rice paddies line the bumpy interstate, if I dare call it that, intermittently.
I had imagined grand swaths of nothing but rice and water and oxen.
A Vietnamese version of the Great Plains with wheat, golden and blowing for days.
Instead the small plots of rows of green tufts pop up like roadside family farms.
Dogs and chickens run on the mounded earth
that separate each carefully planned rectangle of swamp.
In knee high waders and the conical straw hats from movies and dreams,
women crouch over the arrays.
Carefully plucking and bundling the stalks into bouquets of stems.
Each containing grains of precious rice.
Mopeds and bicycles are parked just beyond the marsh on high banked dirt roads
awaiting for the paddies to be cleared.
Sometimes an ox or a gasoline powered push combine till the wet earth.
Sometimes the water is still
Awaiting the growth of next crop.
And the mountains, stoic, rise from the horizon.
A perfect pastoral scene.
The geese, in flocks, paddle their white down through the fields.
And the calves drink gingerly from the water's edge.
Uncle Ben, do you know this peaceful sorry?
Working the land by hand for a pot of instant rice?