"How big 's the beach?" asked a tourist in Chennai "the beach is half-a-klick," came the reply. "No, he's got it wrong; it's six K. M. long, but it is almost half a klick wide!"
Chennai Limerick
Reply
The columns of the forest lift the vaulted canopy. I walk down below on the trail that parts understory. Each step through the loam brings me home to barefoot days of yore. When I thought nothing of placing skin to the forest floor -- while letting the woods become me as I grew into it; I would yield my identity. To nature, I'd submit. And in a walk, I did become everything and nothing, falling into a peace at once humbling and stunning.

so much flower
unpacks from one
tight green bud
Beside a pond, a tree reaches, its branches stretched wide and skyward, blocking the harsh cloud-penetrating rays. Locals sit on the lush grass, their backsides wet, their backs resting on the rough and slanting trunk. They watch ripples echo outward from the mouth tips of feeding fish, those concentric rings etched into in the mirrored waters - and yet moving. In time, watchers will become ripple mesmerized, and will experience the stiff twitch and head nods of an impending nap. sitting pondside, ripples from feeding fish lull my mind
Life overtakes all. Moss coats stone; vines smother shrubs; trees straddle walls. All growing in splotched patterns of green -- a million shapes of leaf in a million subtly different shades. My world is awash in green. My mind is soothed by deep greens, and fired by the bright light-greens of fresh growth. My periphery swirls and blurs with green. a mossy stone becomes my focal point, the fringe blurs
One tree stands in the temple yard, slanting but stable, its bare limbs lazily spiral skyward. Its trunk is gnarled and its branches are twisted and it makes the old ruins around it look modern by comparison. The trunk radiates hardness, a strength from deformation, like the sinewy limbs of a laborer whose muscles are held in constant tension, until they can no longer know suppleness. Seekers of shade and enlightenment once sought its shadow, but now it can only offer a good example. leafless tree -- sitting in the temple yard, luring Buddhas