What the Rubber Farmer Said
by Michael Creighton
May 2004, Kottayam District, South India
Sit and drink your coffee—
when it rains like this, what else can we do?
See there—how I gather the water
that runs in crooked torrents from my roof?
My neighbors called me a fool,
but dented buckets and pans
have kept my well full, even when
those owned by this district’s many fools
ran dry.
You can smell that, can’t you?
I, for one, could not have borne this life
if I had not found beauty buried in the stench
of raw sheets of latex
and fresh piles of cow dung.
Yes, of course I pray.
For 60 years, I have given thanks
for my wife and six daughters.
And I praise God daily
for the thousand raucous shades of green
that collide in these hills—and for
my neighbor’s rice paddy field, where,
well mixed with the sun’s own yellow,
they all somehow settle,
calm and faintly glowing.
