Back To The Usual Walk In The Rice Fields Poem by RIC BASTASA

i am back to this place
and i am feeling strange
there are changes
and some i can tell have been missing

a few meters from where i stand
under this mahogany tree
where the wind is cold and fresh
flavored by the newly cut rice stalks
over this spread of golden fields

the well is still there
but the brown woman with earth skin is gone

an island of coconut trees

(and some mango trees
and banana shrubs)

has turned bald
and the grasses claim another territory to its grassland

the sparrows must have migrated to the nearby forest

the cable lines run an empty length of a sigh
from one pole to another
endlessly clinging is this anonymous electricity


the twenty or so white herons are here again
pecking on some little frogs in small ponds

i walk under the sun
revisiting reevaluating rekindling perhaps
the reasons why i must go on living
a life unlived for quite a time

why are the fields empty? why are the blackbirds circling the tree?
why do people pass by this path unable to know the significance
of this human journey?

the sun is up like an absurdity triumphant
a dog comes near me

it is waggling its tail and i am calling him another name.