Sitting now in a serious rain storm in the mountains of Luang Prabang, The thunder and lightning seems to be carving new mountains and the rain is turning the streets to rivers.
I'm sitting here reading poems and thinking about the amazing chance we have here in all this mess of life, all the happiness and sadness, to see and to hear.
Here is a poem I am spending some time with from Philip Whalen, another vagabond American moving through Asia.
Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis
I praise those ancient Chinamen
Who left me a few words,Usually a pointless joke or a silly question
A line of poetry
drunkenly scrawled on the margin
of a quick
splashed picture- bug, leaf,
caricature of Teacher
on paper held together now by little more than ink
& their own strength brushed momentarily over it
Their world & several others sinceGone to hell in a handbasket,
they knew it-
Cheered as it whizzed by-
& conked out among the busted spring rain
cherryblossom winejars
Happy to have saved us all.
