a rainy day in Lijiang

In this brown town she's wearing a purple shawl and picking her way up the stone steps carefully in the rain as if on tiptoe. And the rock and brick and wood resonate with the sound of warm guitar though mid September's already got its chilly hat on, pulling the sweater tight.

I know the seasons are changing and chasing me south, but I can't yet admit it's not summer. Since July I've only slept in strange rented beds and watched spellbound as the land faded in and out of water and mountains, city and field and darkness or the lesser darkness of Chinese day. I've watched helpless as it all went on behind the speeding windows or right next to my body in some language everyone in the world understands but me.

Seeing the women with their baskets full of apples and split-open pomegranates, families huddled over steaming bowls of rice, the trembling branches and the small hopping birds, makes me lonely. It's lonely to hear them all singing while all I can do is smile, pull money from my pocket, eat and piss and open my umbrella when the thunder sounds.