Inle lake
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On a canoe
Narrow, streamlined,
We slice the waters close
Past houses on stilts
People washing clothes
Bathing
Boys splashing
Past another narrow canoe
Filled with bous and girls
In matching green and white
Heading to school
We turn into a channel
Lined with hyacinths with purple flowers
Then into another
Lanes like unmarked roads
We glide past a compound
Marked by bamboo canes
Stuck into the mud
At regular intervals -
A fence in water.
Then we nudge ourselves
through a space among the fence,
Marked by poles a meter apart
This, here, a gateway
We brush against reeds as we pull up
To a platform
Climb out
Climb up stairs
Receive water to drink
That they give every wandering traveller
For to givens thirsty man water
Is a blessing like no other
Etched against the sky,
reeds and water
All around us green on water
Living with water
Around water
Water is life
Novel for us
Normal for them
People rowing to get their kids from school
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Exotising the ordinary
Our gazs in them
Turns them quaint
Such a loaded term for us with preconceived notion s of the norm
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