Stop This Train

It'll be exactly 30 days until I fly home. That realization, of late, has been staring me straight in the face-- wanting peace, resolution and most of all control. Wanting to be prepared, to be unafraid, and trusting.

I am so excited to leave, and yet so despaired to be leaving. I do need prayers for peace and preparedness.

In the meantime: A couple of weeks ago we went on vacation after our practicums and we got to visit Phuket and Bangkok. We flew, took a bus and even a boat on vacation but we got the lovely opportunity to take a 15 and half hour train ride back to our center in Chiang Mai. This turned out to be  the most comprehensive and breathtaking ways to see the Thai countryside. Exhausted, in need of sleep and completely excited to be there, I wrote this poem on the train "home" and felt compelled to share it tonight.

Thailand by Train

At night: so dark.

Tiny bursts of light peep through the deep purple.

Are they lightening bugs?

Or are they stars.

The awkward blur

Of city lights

As we pass,

Honking,

By.

The murmur of sleepy voices beyond my curtain.

Beyond my privacy

Beyond my dreams.

And the calm realization that I’m living them.

Further, still, into the darkness,

We pass the moonlit hills of this

ancient soil.

Hills wrought with moss,

Blackened by stone and smoke from village life.

I fade, unwillingly,

Unto a dozy trance as the stars float by my window,

And think of the past.

A wind just cool enough to be relieved by a thin blanket.

A sigh, a yawn or two…

___

In the morning,

When Heaven’s only Sun buzzes

bright enough--at last--

to penetrate these eyelids,

I am awoken to nothing but green, green, green.

The green of the banana leaves, yes,

And their vastness, compared with the rest.

The green of the palm trees

tall and pointed,

Shading the villagers and the bugs.

But green, most of all, of the rice field.

Lined with small, separating water paths.

Large enough only for a Thai

To water, nurture, and harvest in the fall.

Dusted by different shades of the color:

Si keow, si yellow, si tan—

Swaying as we pass by them.

Embodying an entire continent’s livelihood, work (love) and pride.

I am greeted also by the familiar music of tropical insects.

The cricket, and gecko, and cockroach too.

By a subai sawat-dee

And a hot cup of tea.

Now, I know, it won’t be long.

Until we reach our destination.

Until the sun turns from friend to hot enemy.

Until the many worries of a student’s busy life vie, valiantly,

for my attention.

But until then I will

Stare at these tall hills

In shady green

Hiding the mysteries of Thai jungle.

I will breath in, slowly, the oxygen that they so graciously pass on.

I will smile to my friends

And laugh at our memories,

Resting, waiting, thinking,

On a train towards Chiang Mai.

Gonna miss this.