The Serpent, Mekong

She slithers from countless rivers

giving of life and death masterly,

A mighty serpentine liquid tapestry.

She carries us vessels as we roam,

foam trailing our aberrant voyage.

Our boat’s bow crashes through wake,

which leaps, clinging to the air like midsummer sleet.

Breathless, no one speaks.

En masse we ponder, our virgin eyes wander,

tracing images of thatched bamboo villages

where diligent villagers labour.

We inhale and savour the moment.

She takes us through cryptic waterfalls, fountains

and vast smoke topped mountains

that leer over us immense

from dense fertile canopies of lilac and green.

We helter skelter her vascular curves,

swerving flocks of emerging rocks,

bulbous, like the heads of bathing hippopotamus.

Watch.

The jungle flotsam dances, chancing currents

Before getting swallowed into her muddy surges

emerging breathless from the merkiness,

surplus to her ferocious thirst.

The humble coffee grind verges collapse as we pass

and tumble into the percolating mocha waters.

Camouflaged spies peer as us queer passersby,

with our peculiar features and our alien eyes.

Rising on the horizon

we see hives of corrugated iron shacks

and primitive huts,

sat at the foot of mother nature’s bust.

On approach our engine splutters and cuts,

the rudder adjusts.

And we twist and drift, with a knock,

into the embrace of her floating bamboo dock.

We have arrived.