Imagine ordered chaos
Frenetic stillness
Waiting for an event
Ever in progress
Then find five men at rest
In the midst of disorder and tumult
One obscured
Ever changing
Ever the same
A paradox of contradictions
Such is
Chandni Chowk
A maze of amazement
Selling all you might want
And never wanted
An eternity of moments
In every moment
Among them five still men
In a state of unrest
In a city of thrum and hum
Always in motion
Always in commotion
Whose voice knows only to shout
Islands of quiet patience
Await their moment
To rejoin the miasma
Of humanity
In the chaos
Amidst the storms
I listen
For the words
Arising from
The love within
In them find
A path beyond
Suff’rings past
Carried in the present
I tumble and fall
Down cascades of white water
Dreams of tranquil pools
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
Tumble
Tumble
Tumble down
From the light
Into the chasm below
There to roil
In the miasma
And darkness
The flume
Goes on and on
And I all along
Do keep my head above
Then exit
Into a wider course
And calmer water
Now swim for shore
Clamber up to land
Breathe a heavy sigh
I have convinced myself
That chaos follows me
As if a companion
Or a stalker I can not shake
Until today’s revelation
That it is merely disorder
Of my own orderly creation
Like the roiling waters
Left in the wake
Of a vessel underway
And I am always underway
Though always looking back
Focused on the havoc
Left behind
In the lives of self and others
Manufacturing in my mind
The spiritual narrative
Of a Job-like tragedy
That relieves me of responsibility
These many lines
Of thought
Of action
Of possibility
Some converging
Some parallel
Some intersecting
A disorder
Of subtler
Orders
Patterns
Within patterns
Within a cross-section
Of a whole
Imperceptible
Step back
And back again
To reveal the whole
With its harmony of line
One small moment of
Solitude in the chaos
Unladen Burdens
From the chaos, rise
Rebuild on patterns scattered
Within the broken
Pix to Words 