




the lotus stands
boldly in pink & yellow;
one petal fallen
In rustic cabins far away from here there live some happy people of the woods. With ruddy cheeks, they're exemplars of cheer. They never visit cities selling goods. They live on what the forest can render, and that's not so much, but it is enough. They tune themselves to nature's vast splendor. In cold, they don skins, but when hot, go buff. Or, perhaps, I lie, and no such people exist in this world or any other. And woods people fuss on matters, fecal -- just like you, I, and all our grandmothers. These cheery, simple woods folk must exist, if only in the mind of this fantasist.
ideas accelerate to the surface like air bubbles from whence they came, i cannot say they passed up from below the lit sea from the darkness maybe, like air bubbles, they follow a mostly straight path, but i cannot say for certain what happens below the light i catch only the vapor that drifts up out of the popping bubbles and it must be gathered quickly before it spreads on the wind, becoming lukewarm nothing... damn increasing entropy!
Terraced rice fields. Some, in rectangular blocks. Others, following valley contours. In the tropics, all stages exist at once: The mirrored surfaces of flooded but unplanted paddies. The orderly stubble of freshly planted fields. The max saturation green fields, densely packed with verdancy. The tawny fields of heavy-headed ripe rice. One may pass all of these (and gradations, thereof) as one walks the narrow lanes that dissect farmland. People, birds, and animals transit the slender paddy levees, lending color to a monotony of vibrancy. Sometimes, a weather-beaten man or woman wades in the field -- feet wide and bent at the waist. Nowadays, people come from far away (sometimes even paying admission) to see these fields -- to see so much green packed under blue skies and to let that photosynthetic glory wash over them. mirrored paddy -- flooded but unplanted; a child studies himself lush green fields. crows on the paddy dike command the eye tawny rice. stalks bent under grain-swollen heads