At the Lakshmi Temple grounds at Rajgir

At the Springs of Temple Lakshmi

At the Lakshmi Temple grounds at Rajgir the hot springs cure all. We wash hands

in the generous springs. Splash liberally on the face and over the head.

Clothes, no matter. Everyone is wet in all manner of dress. Say your name. 

Say your family members’ names. One by one they are cleansed in your prayers. 

Drink shiny metal cups full. Capture it loose and heavy from the stone dragon's

outpouring mouth. Sit with the water as it confirms your shape on worn stone steps.

Listen to children gurgling. See their parents washing their iniquities in pools 

of belief as their parents and their parents and their parents, and so on.

Hear the boatload of middle schoolers on a field trip to Lakshmi's holy springs. 

Watch them bob with giggles and glee, forgetting the anxieties of twelve.

Listen to the girls sing along to the happy Hindi music as they splash. See their 

school uniforms transform from marine blue to the dark deep shelf of the ocean.

Touch the warm waters of Lakshmi Temple to consider how they play with humanity.  

Is it their own beauty, or do they conjure the sublime in you?

Your physical body: How its muscles languish; how the spine bends achingly 

forward in years; how the limbs follow you around carrying tired heaps of skin.

Yet in these waters the body has become gorgeous. It is one with the Hindu prayers. 

One with a clean past. One with the canticles and rhythms of water.

One with the Brahmin priest who is blessing you for your offering, a white flower 

you have laid at the foot of a stone goddess Lakshmi, adorned in purple and gold.

Gold, reflected in your eyes, wide with infinity. Purple like the dripping cliffs, 

curtains of heaven surrounding the pools.

A skinny man balances all that is sugar atop his head on a wide, metal tray, notices

your eyes and dips precariously to showcase all that is available for you.

Your mouth lingers with his sesame, milk, coconut and caramel, and as you drip 

in the cool shade of a bodhi tree, beaded water nestled in the hairs of your arm loosens.

Loosens, ushering a sweet river of sugar juice that disappears in drips off the elbow, 

a gift for grateful ants at the Temple of Lakshmi.

Forgetting where you are could be anywhere or nowhere

It’s All There Is, In India

Sometimes in India

Forgetting where you are

Could be anywhere

Or nowhere, in Kushinigar

From the bus window:

Slow man on a pink, beat bike

A baby rides a lean woman’s hip

Agile dogs mount in a trash ditch

With plastic signs of commerce                  

Everywhere without commerce      

Anywhere on planet earth

After 5 weeks, you are alert

To the location of your bag

In the universe, your gaze,

Passport. Is anyone lurking

The station besides that confident rat?

Where are your feet? How crazy is he?

Are you attracting attention?

Does your crossed leg show too much sole?

How is your odor from the monsoon sweat?

Are you hungry? Did you take a malaria pill?

Alone makes one obsessed with self

Then it occurs to you:  You

Are an insect with giant oval eyes

Alert in the flickering light

Preening yourself, exposed

Alert for predators

Aware of the mopping man

Transforming tiles in swirls

With a glee that comes from

Illusion, or pills, or conviction

That the moment of now

Is all there is

Climate change is melting people free from icy tombs

From a Time Before Climate Change

Towering slabs lose their grip

Remains are melting from the ice

Who starved while singing from their pain

Below blackened cliffs that drip

Of eons, echoing to hush

Deep draws of breath and time

Open tombs around the world

Who ran away with mouth wide open

From war or clutching amulets

Still rubbed clean

Long whimpering thaws

Drain salt of tears to sea

Who was a thief and bled out

Before helicopters

Or search parties

We will date them

Scan pollen samples

Who was hunting ‘til lost in fog

Burry them in boxes

Or museums

Sometimes they curl

Or straighten as they thaw

Who slipped or was chased

Sometimes turn first to red

Then hues of stone

Cannot inquire as to decisions

Study contents of their stomachs

Who lost a lover, well aware into the cold

From a time before engines

Or climate change

The Ghats of Varanasi

The Ghats of Varanasi

The ghats come clean when drops of rain

Flood slurry scum from ancient slabs

Of stone hauled thick from Maharajan cliffs

Into a river flowing brown, opaque and swift

Wide rows of toothy stone, the ghats, in packs

Down from the spitting slums where kids

Wake spritely and squat early in the shade

Then climb into their bare snake suits

These ghats live well on refuse and on ash

As women pound the clothes of day to pulp

In the wash to mangroves where the licks

Of tigers curl in sleep at Bengal Bay

Singing softly in the dusk, the ghats

Ignore the clocks and what is at their backs

Intent with solemn sticks that float with bones

In time with eons and lit candles on their lips

These ghats take all children thin and wet

Whose mothers peer through iron bars to see

Their searing shimmers wiggle as they rise

Or dive in magic arches and bold splash

The gritty ghats lure cashless, squinting bulls

With monkey gods, blue women and the strays

Lap puddles and chew mango seeds til gone

Leaving holy places with their dry thin stools

Brahmin bells proclaim what we have missed

Truth be told, you’ll find it in a coconut

Its cool white milk and wet shredded meat

Is hulled and hairy and smells of burning flesh

On el Dia de Los Muertos

Lying On Her Grave

Incense poked into her soil

We wonder how she died

On November 11, 1878

Woman with lichened, unreadable name

Decayed below her tombstone

A mother oak--dark and stretched

Wide against the glowing white

Of sky

We drink Palomas with Mezcal

Before dodging traffic to a gallery

Watch an artist demolish his perfect

Vessels into sunken forms

The way he remembers bodies

Slumped in the street

Returning to earth

In Iraq

As the candle burns low

Our legs wrap like roots

Noticing gothic letters, flickering

Her name becoming clear

She is John Sutton, a man

We wonder if John has finally

Come out on Dia de los Muertos

With the light

When the gallery lights dim

We eat tacos across the street

For the Day of the Dead

While the Addams Family flickers

Behind the bar, yet

My eyes rivet on spirits

Moving in and out of apertures

Of her dress

No one is watching

On the Dia de los Muertos

The lovers sprawled amongst

Bones.  No one is honoring

Life like those who flicker

In their skeletal moments

Freeing themselves, exorcising

The dead