How Tet Means in Ha Noi

by Bruce Weigl

Trucks from the countryside
laden with peach blossom cuttings to sell
in the city for Tet, help clog
traffic even more as
the city makes ready for the lunar
celebration that is more
than “happy new year” and move on,
and instead, is a rich
accounting of the year already
gone, celebrated in
the ancient villages, Ha Noi
empty of traffic and mostly closed
except for vendors pushing carts
of street-food through the neighborhood,
calling out like in a song
whatever they have to sell, banh my,
French bread Ha Noi sandwiches,
a meal you can enjoy along
your walk through a mostly empty
city if you’re like me, and need
a little reckoning for things
done in the past that feels so long
ago, even the light that fills
these almost empty streets has changed,
wizened by the centuries
of Tet that bring the families back
inside the village life at last,
where everything’s connected like
inside a dream you never want
to end. There is no self the teacher
told me only yesterday,
so, I wonder at the landslide
coming down around me like
mortar rounds exploding inside
our small LZ, seeing
not what’s there, but what really
is, a way of being alive
inside what’s already gone,
the Tet a bridge between two different
ways of being in the world.