crowded skies,
circling raptors weave
invisible baskets.
little chipmunk,
screeching relentlessly,
stop! all are warned.
rat slinks away
as cat creeps near,
despite edge in size.
popsicle monkey,
crowd coos, “Cute copy-cat,”
idly stuffing faces.
Mumbai leopards?
Hollywood mountain lions?
cats seeking parts?
alpine lake,
depth a guarded secret,
mirroring mountain
ships sit
on your sandy bottom,
yet, you’re called “lake”
in sunlight
your glistening canvas,
a bowl of diamonds
winter ice cracks
with steel cable song,
sending shudders
barren pine
beside mud-rimmed lake,
heeding drought
Taken in April of 2017 in Kaziranga National Park in Assam
On a Brahmaputra tributary in Kaziranga National Park.
Taken in May of 2018 in Nepal
The arrogance, shoving words into rows,
try to describe someplace only god knows.
A cube of rock, turned edge skywards,
loftily defying each, and all, of my words.
Jolie laide in its craggy perfection,
free from all vanity and dejection.
When it shrouds itself in cloudy veils,
it doesn’t do so because it quails.
It demands no awe and yet has mine.
It is the sacred, sans the shrine,
and, before it, I bow.
Rushing water carves rock and clay away,
gouging out a statement in nature’s hand.
Water spatter creates a misty spray,
stinging sharply as pelted with wet sand.
A foamy ridge takes a serpentine form
on the glassy warp field glazing brook stones.
This wild water isn’t born of savage storm;
it’s the effortless effort of Zen koans.
My camera fails to capture the calm scene,
but blurs it into a tiny tempest,
transforming a mundane forest stream
into a world scarring menace.
In these rapids I see a tsunami
washing over isles of Izanami.
I
lonesome oak on a hill
having outlived your peers
your progeny denied the light
by scythe and mower blade alike
II
it’s said you speak by pheromone
but no whiff is caught when alone
your words disperse unsmelt
lost across a manmade veldt
III
if it’s any consolation
you have our unflagging admiration
you’re the model of stately poise
to all the little girls and boys
who swing about your stout limbs
Oh, the glorious monotony
of mountain skies
an azure dome
in rare air highs
over the brome
And, too, the lake
glassy tranquil
float duck and drake
in mile high chill
Green, the mountain meadow
White, the wall of fog
Lakes of trapped glacial runoff —
aqua gemstones in dim light
Lines of sheep crisscross
the part lines of trail
that segment the pasture
in Cubist form
Curfew is on again,
“How do you survive with the roads closed?”
“We remember from years ago. There are ways.”
Such a beautiful place
trapped in a cycle of human ugliness
Barren gray mountains —
more than verdant pastures —
echo the Kashmiri struggle
Tiger Riding for Beginners 