Written April 2026
No prompt–see comments and inspiration below for more details.
Highway 108—southbound and soaking
wet from the day’s adventures. Our tour guide
picks up the microphone. He speaks.
I listen. But I
don’t comprehend. His words are foreign, and
I know there’ll be a translation later.
My gaze shifts to the window. A symphony of colors
and textures float by. Highways are supposed to be boring,
monotonous. Why isn’t this one? In sheltered nooks off the
striped curb, people live their storefront lives, work the books, repair the cars.
What is it like to coexist with the hum of traffic, with a world
so tangible and placid?
The tour guide pushes words past my ears. I want to understand
directly what I can only hear, not interpret. The van’s tires drone
softly on Highway 108, drops of frigid water pool
on the floor collected from our ascent of a waterfall.
My mind seeks refuge in garages and behind storefront gates. Better
enjoy it now. They don’t really have this
at home, do they?
Inspirations and Comments
I wrote this poem as a reflection upon our last trip to Thailand, which occurred in the summer of 2024. (Remember that I originally wrote this poem in April 2026, no matter how many years you may be reading this in the future). During a weeklong segment of the trip, we visited the Chiang Mai province and hiked up the Doi Inthanon peak. The hike was part of a guided tour of several viewpoints and key locations in the area–in addition to a stop at an elephant sanctuary–and we spent a lot of time in transit on Highway 108, the main four-lane road that goes from the central Chiang Mai district to the mountains and wilderness.
In this poem, I contemplate the aesthetics and the scenery alongside Highway 108, and the general mood as the tour went on. At the particular time this scene takes place, I imagine that we had just come back from climbing the Sticky Waterfall and were still wet, hence the southbound and soaking in the first line. In Thailand, the sides of the roads–like the one pictured in this post’s featured image–are typically populated with small shops, vendors, and occasionally a gas station or car dealership. There’s something oddly calming and intriguing about the slow whizz of tall vegetation broken up by an open-stall shop or a collection of colorful parked motorcycles. This poem channels that calm, juxtaposing it with the all-too-common perception that–in the United States, at least–highways are boring, monotonous, and often devoid of all wildlife. (That’s true in the majority of cases, although you occasionally run into an interstate highway with some notable scenery). It also contrasts these aesthetics with the ascent of the waterfall mentioned near the end.