Empty hands

Greetings,

Now a steady heavy rain, voices become muted, refined, elegant and peaceful.
The rain has removed their edge where words dance, committing heinous crimes inside the imagination of lovers waiting in the long lonely sad misfortune of falling water.

Moisture is a blessing for farmers huddled under brown and yellow ponchos planting rice in geometric rows.

Shallow water stalks the reeds, finished products steam from cauldrons stabbed with steel and wooden spatulas as students crave their empty bowls but farmers don't know them, see them or begin to imagine ravished desperate eaters with heads bowed over chipped white rice bowls, not in thanks or gratitude but in an eating frenzy - never to be satisfied hunger - muttering with their mouths full - spitting words.

The farmers are happy today. Planting. Walking along thin brown dikes inspecting their little precious kingdom - comfortable in pouring rain music bouncing off the surface, sliding down leaves, green feathers.

A twilight heavy mist is collecting itself with deep clouds, rolling over mountains, along valleys, streams, rivers into the sparse empty layered fields where silent men and women huddle ankle deep in muddy water planting rice shoots one by one until they become invisible.

Peace.