The bucket-of-bolts bus tunneling through night
Passing pagoda and lantern light,
With satchels lashed to the roof,
Brings you through a temple town
To a river crossing by pirogue.
On the far bank a tonga* waits,
Carries you ’cross fallow fields of lumpy paddy,
Spoked wooden wheels rolling,
Horse straining under a switch
Along tortured ruts,
Cart lurching, creaking, shuddering
Finally to the lip of a bluff.
There, thatched canteens serve rice
And bamboo shoots on banana leaves
Hard by some shrine thronged by supplicants -
Or was it just by a mandala, a glyph, an epigram?
It was never clear,
However earnest our hunger.
But this much I learned on reaching home.
The return journey
By tonga and pirogue,
Back to the satchels you laid down,
Back on the night bus –
That return is the real pilgrimage.
Jpl 2/2025
*tonga – a horse drawn, two-wheeled cart.