Rootless

Between Hanoi and Sapa there are clean slabs of rice fields

and no two brick houses in a row.

I mean, no three—

See, counting’s hard in half-sleep, and the rain pulls a sheet

over the sugar palms and their untroubled leaves.

Hours ago, I crossed a motorbike with a hog strapped to its seat,

the size of a date pit from a distance.

Can this solitude be rootless, unhooked from the ground?

No matter. The mind resides both inside and out.

It can think itself and think itself into existence.

I sponge off the eyes, no worse for wear.

My frugal mouth spends the only foreign words it owns.

At present, on this sleeper train, there’s nowhere to arrive.

Me? I’m just here in my traveler’s clothes, trying on each passing town for size.