harsh silence,
lost beats steal word’s
authenticity
silent snows
seen through crossed muntins,
drifting eerily
fog resting on
Coconut Grove’s soil until
chased by dawn’s din
ridge rows,
in waning shades of gray
end in white void
creek burbles
hushed to unheard drips
from icicles
enshrouded in cloud,
a Chinese painting transplanted to India,
gnarled evergreens grow from cracked granite
like the bonsai that twists into a broad bloom of foliage,
i’d have thought the great white space, simple shapes, and gorgeous deformity
wouldn’t appeal to the Indian mindset —
so taken with vibrancy and fullness,
and yet crowds throng round,
staring in wonder,
ensnared by the same scene as
Shen Zhou when he painted, “Poet on a Mountaintop”
or
Fan Kuan as he painted, “Travelers Among Mountains and Streams,”
like two lovers fixated on one moon.
boot crunch
‘a cloudless night,’
he concluded
old coat of snow
nary a track in sight
beauty abandoned
snow blind
trudging and slogging
pure torture
crust of snow
over dry powder
bone cold
drifting flakes
add a wedge wall
to a farmhouse
If you discover an experience for which the mind relentlessly snaps back to the now, do it.
You are that experience. Any fissure between you and it will heal together — a decreasing entropy unseen in mountains. Crevasse. Cleft. Crevice. Scratch. Scar. Smoothness.
If your wild mind becomes ordered by the gravitational pull of the moment — a sinkhole of now formed of a vortex of sensory experience — pursue that thing.
Srinagar,
drifting on Dal Lake,
mirror of mountains
blossomed branch bobs,
twisting on wind as a bee
hovers, seeking sync
hill station hut
rain trounces the ground
lulling reveries
monkeys grooming
in a triangle, and I wonder
will they turn on 3?
from Shimla town
summer leaves hide the giant
orange overseer
The world exists, save for me.
I’m a figment floating eternally.
You won’t say that I am not.
But I’m the burning word that time forgot.
I’m a lost watcher, fallen.
Never had either a hope or calling.
Disembodied, feels so real.
I’m the ceaseless turning of dharma’s wheel.
pack your pack, and travel on
you are but a vagabond
ceaseless wanderer; tempting fates,
searching out unknown city gates
each set you see; how fair they look
til you find them listed in the book
don’t bemoan those past trampled lands
of buildings built or shifting sands,
no place displays itself twice the same
so on your moment, stake your claim
Feeling the steel bridge’s dampened spring underfoot.
Built for a handful of pedestrians,
but currently saddled with 60 —
along with six scooters,
one 125cc motorcycle
and a cow.
The cow is the most capable of insisting that a path
be cleared, and of clearing it.
Yet, in this city of sadhus,
it’s the only one not trying to crawl up anyone’s back.
Though it’s far more intimidating than the sickly, hoarse horn of the motorcycle —
drawn out in the way of terminally ill batteries.
The cow steps when a void opens and stands stoically when there is none.
Time seems to be a different experience for it than for its fellow travelers.
The bovine’s simple cortex knows one rule:
“If you can’t get where you’re going,
the only win is found in being satisfied where you are.”
And now I pray,
“Lord, grant me the patience of a Rishikesh cow.”
The early morning sun warms the silvery shafts of a eucalyptus to a buttery yellow.
That seems a fine bit of grace,
until I see a hawk whose brown cowl is glowing gold in the same light,
as it perches watchfully on the one corner of a dilapidated building
that receives rising rays.
There’s a strange country
tucked away in the mind.
One can stumble into it
without expecting to;
Have you been there?
I remember pounding a drum to echolocate reality.
But the spongy landscape swallowed all sound.
A spastic second of fury and neural fireworks seized me
before I was overcome by the sadness
that terror was my go-to response
in the face of the unfamiliar.
What if I’d decided to be exhilarated?
Could one rise from the dead of living?
And so it came to be that the strange country cracked open,
giving birth to a world anew.
And leaves and rocks glittered with a cleansed glow.
And familiar country was suffused with an aura of novelty.
