We push past metropolis,
Speeding north—and away from the crowds
And cars
Of the city.

Along the highway, fathers and sons maneuver
Radio-controlled airplanes
Which soar and dip in the yawning gulf of air below them.
They pay no attention to the blue of the water below,
Nor to the houses floating like lily pads
Far from shore.

We watch the people
And the planes
For only a few minutes,
Then begin to make our way down
To the unassuming village below.
Po Toi O—a place I remember only through my own photographs
That never emerge quite right from the fixer.

It seems smaller than what my dusty, grainy negatives suggest—
We could count the number of houses still floating
If only my three-year-old daughter were not so intent
On speeding down the hill.
The fish cages stand out—interlocking boxes in the middle of the water.

Below is the village itself.
Children ride their bicycles outside the temple,
Their wheels barely leaving track marks in the dry, unyielding dirt,
As old men sit on folding stools
And eye us warily.

We walk along the one main path.
Between the houses and the open storefronts built on stilts,
We can see the water beneath us.
There are steps that descent down into the water.
I watch a young man pull a raft to his front door,
Climb aboard,
Then pull himself to the steps twenty meters away on the shore.
He steps off, walks up the stairs and disappears.

At one restaurant, there is no front façade or door--
Simply a roof to keep the rain and the sun off the heads
Of patrons and workers alike.
No one is dining there—
Instead, men gather around a table, the one furthest from us,
More intent on the card game than the new faces entering.

Towards the end of the path is a fish market.
Perhaps in honor of the upcoming Lunar New Year,
The speckled crabs are adorned with red ribbons
Tied into big bows across their backs.
A fishmonger ignores us
And the inquisitive glass eyes of my camera,
Dipping his hand into the tanks
And transferring fish
From one
To the other.