Perfume Pagoda Cave, Nov. 18, 1pm (a poem)

Perfume Pagoda Sanctuary
Originally uploaded by Mike Rettberg.

"Buddha doesn't fuckin' care," she said.
I contemplated this obvious blasphemy and truth
then decided I wasn't altogether worried about the distinction.

Perhaps it was the two dozen or so souvenir standsw we passed on the thousand-stair climb to this holy place.
Maybe it was the prevalence of littler on the path.
Or the incense-seller who aggressively detained me so that I might purchase some good luck from the Buddha.

Or maybe it was just the latest in the months of ironies
that make up much of my feelings about Vietnam.

Like the gondola that will soon be completed to whisk monks and tourists alike
to this holy cave,
where Buddha is backlit by a lite-brite wheel of yellow, red, and green.

Only 24 hours left in-country
on this, my first tour of Vietnam.
And I suspiciously eye each vendor
and all the disease-carrying chickens.