Personal intimacy
Recorded moment
I exit Jama Masjid’s exquisite tranquil beauty
Take a moment outside on the steps
To put on my shoes
Before stepping down
Into the cacophony of civilization
I was told, by many people
India would be a game-changer
Would alter my understanding of everything
In ways that could not be described
Only experienced
But I’d already spent 6 months
Bicycling across China
How much more
Could my understanding
Be altered?
More than I can describe
To those who have not shared
The experience of India
More than I can even describe
To myself
Lines and curves
Simply and exquisitely executed
Create a harmony in form
Unparalleled
While the prisms and lenses of my culture
Cut and polished from fear and ignorance
Distort the culture that created this beauty
Into twisted paroxysms of ugliness
Sol yet plays coy with leaden horizon
But there is enough magic
In dawn’s wan light
To illumine the contrast
Of ancient glory
Astride modern poverty
While camera and I
Find beauty in both
This parade of life
This hubbub of trade
Of needs
Of desires
This chaos of order
And community
And here am I
Amid the throng
In the moments between
Want and have
In the choices between
Necessity and pleasure
This is existential quandary
Alone in my thoughts
In a sea of solitary moments
Each a universe
Borne from a solitary mind
Known only to itself
These in parallel all
With the essentials
Of desire
And necessity
A flurry of universes
Sharing a single dimension
While in my universe
The bodies of a thousand strangers
Dance in cadence
With the flow of trade
A performance at once
Exquisitely mundane and beautiful
Grounded yet adrift
Betwixt and between
Tethered while untethered
Her beauty
Both fades and grows
Returning to the Earth
From which she once
Set out to sea
The cycle of life
Beautiful and cruel
Both to be found
In any single moment
This one nears the end
At which new life begins
Sun burns white hot
Through dissipating fog
Sets wildflowers ablaze
With its morning rays
Sonic beacon rendered mute
Its clarion calls to clarity
Invited cerulean hues
A day begun
In dour temper
Manifests its beauty
Though journeys be fraught
With pitfalls and wanderings
Know the beauty of the path
That the pitfalls and wanderings
Make the path beautiful
That serenity finds its moments
On a sun saturated plain
The things made by hands and their machines
Grow weary with time
Soon to be retrieved
By the Earth
And the things which need
No self-consciousness or master
To suffuse the landscape
With life and beauty