POEM: Claustrophobic Shores [Blank Verse Sonnet]

The rain bands slant across the narrow track
between the leaden clouds and churning seas.
The vastness, standing before ocean’s edge,
is boxed by rain, low clouds, and rising waves.

My view of infinite space shrivels up.
The water curtain hides what lies behind —
the lost horizon lies, disguised by lines
of squall that crawl with all the time allowed.

What brought me to this shore is now mislaid:
some sense that I could never be contained.
I’m sure that storm intends to push me home —
back to the box where it thinks I belong.

But then it passes by; blue skies beyond,
and I can see out past the trawler’s shapes.

POEM: Unceasing Jungle

The jungle paints the ruins green —
brown blocks are made verdant.
So, you can’t see its ordered shape
’til you part the curtain
of palms and vines and mammoth leaves
that hide those old remains —
once hacked back by muscled men who,
daily, took great pains
to clear the rampant jungle growth
out beyond moat and berm.
‘Til the invading army won,
and Fort was deemed infirm.

DAILY PHOTO: Water Lily

Taken near Varkala in March of 2016.

DAILY PHOTO: Arabia Mountain

Taken in March of 2009 at Arabia Mountain Park

POEM: A Low Layer of Rushing Clouds [Prose Poem]

A vein of graphite gray clouds glide — low and fast — under a static white ceiling. No  patches of blue peek through, today. Oh, where are those fast blackened clouds sailing at such a clip? And are the high white clouds truly still, or does the contrast with these fast clouds hide some sluggish drift. Maybe the higher clouds are too uniform — stretching out to all horizons — for motion to be seen.

Is this low layer of rushing clouds some kind of smoke monster or a drunkard’s dragon? Seems too motivated to just be water vapor.

POEM: Hangdog Flower

A flower by a creek,
swaying like a metronome.
Its bright and bulbous head
sits atop a skinny stalk

Oh, are you counting time?
Or is time foreign for you?

Your scent rides on the air.
Your petals flame bright yellow.
Your every aspect
is a call for attention,

and yet you bow your head
like a dog caught in the act.

DAILY PHOTO: Himalayan Sand Dune

Taken in August of 2016 in Nubra Valley

POEM: The Zen of the High Mountain Pass

Each step through the scree field must be judged on: angle, stability, slipperiness — but the flat, dry, and robust rock is the one that will roll on you — heaving you headlong, rolling over brick and boulder.

Crossing the glacier, each step is taken both like it won’t fail and like it inevitably will.

The former because one can’t fear one’s hips will slip out from under one, but the latter because one needs to be ready to stab an axe into the snowpack without the other end puncturing one’s ribs. 

When you reach the altitude at which stepping is a series of singular activities — not a seamless sequence — you will love breathing like you haven’t since that time you were dangling upside-down outside the womb being smacked on the bottom by a masked man.

DAILY PHOTO: One Funky Iris

Taken in Himachal Pradesh in the Summer of 2015.

POEM: Landscape, Ancient & Alien

It was an alien landscape,
in red-brown Martian hues,
but built of boulders older than
the skies have known the blues —
or so the locals always said.
But no man knew those views.
They date to days primordial —
before artist or muse.