People going through things, I salute you. Here’s a short poem.

The train to Kampot has teal cushions
but you might call them green, or blue.
On its way out of town it passes
all the colours and flavours of Phnom Penh:
a critical mass of scooters and remorques,
old men poking around in heaps of plastic,
women in patterned skirts dutifully sweeping
their patios, young men in livery
eating breakfast from tin bowls,
wrecks of cars buried under layers of dust,
occasional smooth stretches of road,
overgrown waterways, plumes of smoke
carrying the scent of grilling pork and bananas,
billboards advertising “premium German beer”,
white-plastered low-rises,
slum communities clustered around the tracks,
dogs hollering their responses
to the locomotive’s incessant blasting horn,
and everyone watching the windows of the train,
making half-closed-eye contact
with the passengers as we rattle and scrape on by.
Until, at last, the buildings give way to Cambodia’s
sun-baked flatlands, ridged by endless
water management systems and scrubbed clean
by the tongues of thirsty cows.