The land needs more
Than water
To sustain life
When the soil itself
Is toxic
And yet
Even here
Against formidable challenge
Life finds a way
Amongst the nooks and crannies
Of possibility
The land needs more
Than water
To sustain life
When the soil itself
Is toxic
And yet
Even here
Against formidable challenge
Life finds a way
Amongst the nooks and crannies
Of possibility
Test the lines again
Against prevailing currents
Reassured secure
Harried by sea gulls
Or so it seems
Invited guests
Swarm the hands
That feed them
Life flitters on Ganga’s banks
A small cascade of humanity
Going about its day-to-day
Details succinctly lit
Or lost in silhouette
The same to my mind’s eye
What seems a bath
Instead a spiritual cleanse
What seems unclean water
Instead the holiest of rivers
On the banks of its holiest city
At rest
Between the fires
The morning long past
The evening to come
These form flotillas
Of tourists and pilgrims
To view the Ganga Aarti
Twice daily
It becomes a familiar thing
The thing we’ve all seen
In the same way
Photographed from the same spot
And so you go there
And when you take the photograph
You stand in the same spot
And take the same photograph
And damn if it ain’t as beautiful
As you’ve been told it was all these years
As beautiful as all the photographs
Taken from the same damn spot
And so you say to yourself
Yep. Been there
Done the beautiful thing
Seen and photo’d the remarkable thing
So you leave
And there’s some time
So you go to another thing
And the other thing’s pretty cool too
But then…
Then you see something
Some new other thing
Through a window in the cool thing
So you go up to the window
To get better look at this new other thing
And it takes you a minute
‘Cause you’ve never seen this new other thing
And it’s absolutely magnificent
And you wonder, just for a second
Where it was, all along
How’d everyone miss this exquisite thing
Before you realize
It’s the beautiful thing
The Remarkable thing
Seen from a different place
And it just blows your mind
I mean
I think the beautiful remarkable thing
Is even more beautiful, more remarkable
When seen from this different place
But everyone’s hung up
On the one place
The perfect place
For seeing the beautiful remarkable thing
So that’s how everyone sees it
And, yes
This poem is a metaphor
But what’s more important
Is finally seeing the beautiful remarkable thing
As if for the very first time
I tumble and fall
Down cascades of white water
Dreams of tranquil pools
I watch the hummingbird
Sipping nectar
Its wings but a blur
My eye cannot find
I watch the river
Cascades over rock
Imagine a smoothed blur
For an eye much slower than mine
The hummingbird sighs
Slows its speech to my pace
Time, you see
Whether stopped or a blur
Is a trick of the mind
The tumble and tumult
The cascade and chaos
All of it is pain
My being rent
By forces
External of choice
Until I realize
The flow of possibilities
Converge on a single channel
Even small choices
Alter my course
Through the rapids
I can navigate
Even the roughest water
Toward the serenity
Of a gentle flow
There is some beauty in this
The discovery of peace in turmoil
Crossing the prairie
On gravel and roiling dust
So much road to share