styly,
expensive suit, expensive shoes, expensive
luggage. “I’ll sweep the graves, I mean, fix them.
Find my people’s bones, and bury them again.”
(Oh, to say “my people.”) “Cousin
was mad; he dug up Po and Goong.”
Mr. Walking Mountain laughed—heh
heh heh heh. Chinese laugh
when telling awfulness. “Cousin dug and cried,
dug and cried, ‘Out the Olds! Out
the Olds! Out! Out, old family.
Out, old thoughts. Out! Out!’
He dug up our grandparents and scattered
their bones—ha ha ha—because
I was rich in Hong Kong and did not
send money—heh heh heh—
did not feed him, did not make good,
did not make good him.” Chinese
laugh when pained. “I return. I shall
walk mountain, and follow li. I’ll
make good the ancestors.”
Jing ho
.
Make good. Fix
. “Dui dui,”
said the Big Family. “Dui dui dui.”
Oh, to hear dui dui dui
to whatever I have to say.
The listening world gives approval, dui
dui dui dui. The train stops
at stations in built-up places. Where’s
open country? The planted fields, water
and rice, rice and water, are but green
belts around factory-villages. Those are
50-gallon drums of something rusting
into the paddy. That apartment and that
factory
is
a village. Legs of Robotron
stomp through the remains of the old pueblo.
Gray pearlescence—marshes and lakes,
mists and skies mirroring mirroring. Beautiful,
and alive. Or dead with oil slick? Mist
or smoke? Why are Wittman and I
on journey with the dead, and escorts of the dead?
Toward sunset, there swung past
a series of pretty villages, yellow adobe
houses, almost gold in the last light,
almost houseboats, wood railings
on the river for laundry and fishing. Half
the homes hung on either bank. Make
up your mind, Monkey, get off the train,
see the rivertown, enter its symmetry.
Paddle the river straight down the valley;
stream with the sun’s long rays. Walk
the right bank and the left bank. Get
yourself invited into those homes. Sit
on the balcony facing the river and the neighbors
on the other side, everyone’s backs to mountains.
Upon Good Earth, lay the body down,
open the mouth wide, let song rush through.
RICE VILLAGE
At the next station, Wittman, nobody else,
got off. The moment his feet touched ground,
the Chinese earth drew him down
to her, made him fall to his knees, kowtow
and kiss her. Gravity is love force. It bends
light and time and us. Mother pulls us to
her by heart roots. I have felt Great Spirit
before: Touching the green wood door
of Canterbury Cathedral. Hearing the air
of Hawai‘i singing ‘Aina. Standing in the fire
zone, where my house and neighborhood were burning.
Lofting great balls of pink mana
at the White House and Bush, and Iraq.
The interested traveller walked along the railroad
tracks, then up on path atop bunds.
In the San Joaquin Delta, we walk and run
and bicycle upon dikes too, call them levees.
Many kinds of plants. Crop diversity.
Rice in all stages of growing and going
to seed. All seasons happening at once.
Plains and terraces, levels and hills, greens
dark and light, blues, and straw, are dotted
with moving red—the farmers are working dressed
in red. They can see where one another are.
They are seen; they are lucky. It’s beautiful
and lucky to dot red on anything—cookies,
buns, baby carriers, envelopes, white
chicken meat, white dogs. On one’s self,
who blesses the earth good and red.
Wittman got to their village before they did,
nightfall ere home from work. The yellow
adobe pueblo was one conjoined structure.
Neighbor and neighbor lived with common walls
this side and that side. Each life impacts
every life. You’d have to live carefully.
You’d watch your moods. And your actions.
Curious Monkey entered through an opening
in a wall and faced another wall,
decided to go right, right being
the right way, usually. The next doorway
took him to an alley; he could look-see
into courtyards,