When February fog no longer settles salt-like,
Mother goes down to the field.
When morning mist begins to lift from bamboo leaves,
Mother goes down to the field.
When Venus explodes the moony muck
(And the B-52),
Mother goes down to the field.
When plodding beneath the blazing Pleiades
(And prowlers blasting BOMBOCLAT),
Mother goes down to the field,
When Brother finally breaks and bleeds,
When Father bears down, barricades, plunders,
When the BOOM, the POW,
When neglect begins to freeze the trapping apparatus,
the PLOW, the SPADE,
When the SPEAR, the BLADE,
And when I think of you,
the CLINK, the VASE,
Before the BANG, the BULLET,
When nothing,
nothing, nothing, nothing,
My mother goes down to the field.
~~
Lê Đức Trọng is a Physics PhD student at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is Vietnamese, and can be found at @trongd.le on Instagram.
