Woodsmoke guides us through the mist, trailing fragrance to the village. Backpacks full of conveniences Western as our beliefs, we're dead set on finding these people happy without socks or faucets. We wear our watches, digital signs of contamination by the luminous hands of time. Like Typhoid Marys we carry progress to this quietude hoping here infants have no gene for greed. Women turn their smiles, shield children from our cameras leaving nothing to record but things. Pictures of palm-frond roofs will slide on our walls while serious chestnut eyes must slowly fade on memory's transparency. My pictures flash upon my wall, bamboo weaves across my plaster, conjuring up one little Lizu boy who, transfixed by my repetitive pallor - pale skin, pale hair, pale eyes - wept as though he'd met his future's ghost. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOKEN AT A CASTLE GATE by DONALD (GRADY) DAVIDSON AFTERGLOW by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON QUESTION by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON SERVICE by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE CROSS by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON TO OUR MOCKING-BIRD; DIED OF A CAT, MAY, 1878 by SIDNEY LANIER |