What You Don’t See

Melinda J. Irvine

9 years ago

Photographing
the top of sugar cane
you can’t see

a group of kids
following me along
the hot road

running back
to a little bridge
when I turn around.

You don’t see
a man under that sun
waving in delight

as I photograph his
poverty, spraying
poison on the rice

without any mask.
You won’t see
the old woman

grinning in surprise
as I wander past
her tiny bamboo house,

or three men
in a tractor
towing a broken truck

waving and posing and waving
as my camera
passes by.