Early Mornings

I mean 5 or 6 AM mornings. The ones where it's not raining and there thickness of night sticks in the air. This is my Chiang Mai, when the women light the coals for the day's lunch and the market vendors are hauling their melons out of pickup trucks. This is the time of homeless people moving between sheets of canvas and  corrugated iron, looking out into the dark street, waiting. The roads are quiet, the dawn is cool over the water, and breakfast of Chinese donuts with hot soy milk was never more appropriate.