The Rice Farmer

Bali sunset light. A light of soft gentle music from a choir of painters. A tapestry on a loom of sky. Mountains stand strong and silent in the distance. 

Ducks settle down in their straw hut as a young waitress reads in an upstairs section of a bamboo restaurant. Business is slow.  Downstairs a child cries as someone slices dark green vegetables on a chopping block mixed with laughter. Motorcycles race along a twisted road blazing shrill horns. Birds and gekkos create twilight music as day slowly fades.

A narrow dusty dirt uphill path winds through the jungle. A woman with deeply lined brown skin wearing a purple sarong passes in and out of shadows. She maintains a steady pace balancing a stack of red bricks on a torn dirty yellow towel wrapped around her head. Her brown eyes glance down at the rocky terrain and up, straight ahead.

A gaunt rice farmer cleans debris from around rice stalks in a paddy near Monkey Forest Road. He wears faded blue shorts, a torn yellow t-shirt and sweat-soiled straw hat.

He pulls, smooths, and pats thick wet muddy soil in the water while tossing clumps on a pile of rocks at a construction project.

As daylight escapes he moves along a rice paddy terrace, stopping to splash water on his arms and legs removing the mud of his day with strong fingers and hands sliding up and down leather skin. 

Picking up an old hoe, he places it on a thin shoulder and continues along narrow edges inspecting adjacent paddies. Calloused feet trace a zig-zag pattern toward a dark horizen of trees and thick tropical forest. His figure becomes smaller and smaller.  

A slight breeze moves through green rice. Rice paddy water stands silent.

Metta.