Mae Hong Son: City of Three Mists
Consider the sun rising over
mountain peaks piercing mist
floating over a pearl-grey morning,
how light expands, uncontained,
though filtered, how the still air
finds a way to stir petals
of a leelawaddee flower, like
fingers through a lover’s hair.
⁓
Along a run of chicken wire
roves a prodigal crop of morning glory
stretching to face the sun
leaking through the mist.
Lightheaded, I hold my breath,
hoping to never exhale
the cerulean sweetness
I hold inside.
⁓
Buds of lotus, like tiny stupas,
rise from a pond and disappear
into morning’s low-slung mist.
Deep inside the opaqueness
smoky silhouettes begin to form,
then fade, then rematerialize.
Overhead doors rattle as shops
open for business.
James Green is a retired university professor and administrator. He divides his time between his home in Muncie, Indiana, and Mae Hong Son, Thailand, where he serves as a volunteer with the Jesuit Refugee Service. You may learn about his poetry at his website, www.jamesgreenpoetry.net.