Morning. The future walks in ancient shadow, Mongrels Pick at ticks On the sunny side of the foot walk. Children Burdened with books and dreams, Nurture homework. Improve their little minds, With chess games with juvenile themes. Structure My poetry with unstructured life, While acid atrophies From yesterday’s lunch, An aseptic syringe will now extract blood. Numbers Scroll away from right to left, Abbreviating The TV picture, On the patio the newspaper thuds. Knowledge Of one more plane ride with swollen feet, Poetry That meanders, On airline stationary embossed in gold. The sun Will climb the hazy hot cloudless sky, Dreams Will evaporate with morning shadows, My dogs and I Will pant our way through one more day. I know What the finite future has to say, I knew, when all Was desert sand without mongrels, Stray cats Now have their litter in abandoned flats. Dialogue Between Nations embroiled in puppetry, The puppet master Looks askance at maiden eyes and exuberant hips, And gifts rifles To teenagers working hard in poppy fields. Time For the dogs and me to retire and repair, The noisy air-conditioning Waits for the next inevitable power outage, The future waits To gobble up tomorrow’s relentless sun.
They should not leave The underbelly of our inner cities open, It smells to high heaven, Nausea wafts up Through cast iron grills Protecting sewerage drains, Intermingles with fumes From my first coffee cup. There is logic Behind the evening fragrance of our flowers, Adorning our insect ridden tropical porch, The smell attracts insects with hairy legs, Pollen clings to insect hair. Unlike butterflies and hummingbirds In temperate climes, Who are drawn to carefully nurtured flower colors, Odorless, A riot of sight in a tropical night, Would be profligate. I learn to be blind From my homeland insects, Teach my palms to touch The sculpture of a chiseled face, If it is cold it must be marble, If it is warm it must be flesh. Moisture means it is lips Hot air ruffles my finger hair, The nostrils must have flared, My thighs will feel the shanks quiver, Jasmine must mean Flowers in her jet black hair.
Millions of fallen Adams and Eves Slither down ropes, To mossy steps. In the cave is the Phallus symbol, Black stone Weathered shiny with worship, Shaped by a millennium of sin. The passageway is on the left, Dimly lit, the downward slope, Etch marks on soft stonewalls, Perhaps with ox tail hair, Or dainty fingernails. This passageway twists and turns, Before it leads once more to the sun, And plum orchards under grown With grass and bramble, Fallen overripe plum, Squirrels and snakes nibble At fallen ripe plum. The moss on my back is testimony, I have been there and back, I will not risk my middle-aged shin Slithering down ropes to precipitous steps, The phallus is stone embedded in my conscious, The future is a basket Of ripening plum.
Watermelon pips roasting on sand Warmed in a cast iron pan Over a stolen wood fire, Not chestnuts, Watermelon pips. The bus route is 401. Calculate, Where in the queue should you stand? Where must you position your poetry? Both must get sitting space, And munch contended At roasted watermelon pips. The sun dips. The breeze will still be hot, But it will turn the sweat to salt, Be patient, Let the bus start. It will be a forty-minute ride, People will get on and get off, Ticketless youth will be boisterous, Ticketless old widows Will pretend not to understand. And you will come home to juice, From burnt green mango, Spiced with pepper and salt.
Hooves slip on cobbled stone I totter center of gravity up in the sky Transparent sheet glass of ice still water not a tree in the vicinity Sun strikes one puff of cloud air is rare last lotus bud in the lotus pond. Cracks on glass are spider webs joined together by divine design at crack of dawn The west face is lighted up blushes rose blinding yellow assault on nocturnal shadow The temple priest settles his turban first mule train little dots on cobbles far below His palms are soft and comfortingly warm against my palm already blue in the numbing cold A zombie redirects incense fumes the Holy Book lies open and covered with brocaded cloth Silence pounds my throbbing eardrums the Song reverberates touches every mountain peak I lead my litany into the vortex metal melts mule train with pilgrims undulates They look for the Word that illuminates mountain tops grimly watch the language less deaf and mute Crimson flower bigger than my fist insists it will go to sleep on marble steps My poetry wafts back into my mind futile in the light of dawn no one reads the alphabet Tablets of stone will disintegrate bush fire quenched by the power to meditate Valleys shrouded by morning mist life our past is burnt by the uninterrupted sun Presently the west face will be in shadow move the sun our future is cracks in sheets of glass From mules the pilgrims disembark stragglers today burrow in anthills for some little heat Salvation is a fistful of fragrant white flowers plucked to adorn the sanctity of the Holy Book The Word is all and all is the Word listen as It floats by you to Its daily chores
Note:
PILGRIMS DREAM had been written after a trek to Hemkunt Saheb and The Valley of Flowers, a pilgrimage for SIKHS in the Garhwal Himalayas. It is reputedly the second most difficult pilgrims' trek in the Himalayas. The 21 kilometre trek takes you up from 7000 feet to 16500 feet. I did hire a mule but walked 90% of the way. The poem is not an attempt at contrived Haiku, I can't write Haiku. It is just a coincidence that I thought in 3 line sequences.
The other poems are all written in the Uttaranchal Himalayas. They do not necessarily talk of the mountains themselves and are certainly not travel poems, they are about what went on in my mind during the driving, the sunsets and of course, every new day.