Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Cambodia Seems Dusty


Cambodia Seems Dusty
              To you whom God calls here

Does the day start when the roosters crow?
                                                                  Seems so:
                     The day awakes before the sun.

The sun is strong,
the rain is strong,
and the heat is strong.
In the villages, the people are friendly
and weathered.
And everyone comes from the villages,
Where the rice fields lie flat
lollipopped with
coconut trees
and palm trees.

The buildings are bold
bright
blue and red and
orange and green and
traffic median-paint yellow.
The buildings are muted
wood and faded thatch,
rusty metal roofs.

The background is bright
rice-green to shame lawn-care,
tropically flowering-fruiting-and-flourishing
forests and fields,
farms, yards, gardens, and
painted pots.
The background is drab
dust-ridden paved roads,
dust-red dirt roads,
bare-trampled yards,
and construction zones.



The people are rich
See the thousand rooftops
‘round the royal palace?
The people are poor
we see the young ones,
see the old ones on the street.

The past is bleakyears
of power struggles,
 land-grabbing,
and terror.
The past is glorious—because
Who has built such temples?

The future is darkfears
        of corruption and prostitution
                ever ensnaring,
                        stripping the richness of the
                land from all people and
        twisting it into the
pockets
        of a few.

The future is bright—because
The people are building,
The church is dawning,
And after all,

what is the miracle of man but
bones out of dust,
                tendons out of dust,
                                flesh out of dust,
                                                beating heart full of dust dissolved in rain,
                                                                running red only by the hands of
                          God?

      And we know:
   God’s hands are still moving,
And Cambodia has a lot of dust.




Christmas 2011

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