GOLDEN TORTOISE, THE

Rush Hour

39 My co-leader Steven Leibo has been wandering Asia since the war days. For decades he has been greeting the dawn on Asian bridges. He first introduced our early morning ritual on the bridge over the Sai Gon River. We begin this journey as we did the others, in Ho Chi Minh City again, rising with the sun to stand among the throngs on foot, bicycle, cyclo, or moped crossing the Khanh Hoi Bridge. Rush Hour Like light straining to pierce an oldster’s cataracts the white fireball of morning greets me through a hazy sky. It is my third year of days begun on this simple span of concrete arching across the gray-green river. The small of my sagging back is supported by the same span that upholds these thousands. I stand here, white and alone, in a sea of flowing tan droplets, in a torrent of falling yellow rain, on a face flooding with ochre tears. They are stares. They are nods. They are grins. Their eyes are questions, dances, blessings. It is for me to come, year after year, to stand and greet through their rush hour. It is for me to carry new things, things that smile to this place where we cargo-ed endless tears. It is for me, on this teeming morning bridge, to join the sun in burning off the nightmares, the cataracts, the old fears that keep me alone, that prevent us from becoming a single sea, a single sky, a single face. R I visit Reunification Hall. It was the old presidential palace until April 30, 1975, when its gates were forced open by Russian-built T-54 tanks leading the victorious Northern forces. Next to me a former American ranger stands in front of the lead tank and remembers: ...