like a monkey at a temple

I want an immediate response from the world

my brother-in-law fights the same depression

he turned into a Cowboy

I stayed an Indian.

Back in Queens I see a man across the street

he's in an Andy Capp hat and twead coat
he used to hem my pants (he's retired now)

he knows my thoughts but doesn't recognize me unless I say hello first

see that ******* the stoop, the one with her hair veiled over her face, staring at her iphone as to a shrine

I've seen my mother-in-law bow down like that at Meher Baba's Samadhi

I should not have been watching her take darshan

in front of her Lord - in supplication - she folded into herself like a napkin

on the way back, we stayed at the Leela and had a lot to drink before we flew home

I wish she knew how lucky I felt being with her - praying and drinking

but last night she called and couldn't remember a thing

it pains me she is losing her memory

I  had to repeat again and again, 'yes, I have your ticket and passport'

or 'remember we flew in together and now we are going back'.

so naturally our conversations return to her growing up on a farm in Virginia; the second oldest to four brothers, her swimming in a creek and charming all the boys, and leaving home at seventeen to dance with Margaret Craske in New York City (how she loved Miss Craske).  

she married a priest who crusaded for the poor in the Lower East Side;  pregnant with her first daughter (and me, having the saving grace to have married that daughter) she met Meher Baba -  a meeting that changed her course and late in life she became a Psychologist (a PhD at 74!).   

her natural graciousness was born of the wild flowers of Machair (her people are from the Hebrides),
her love of dance, now transposed and expressed in a light and buoyant outlook, made all a fools mimicry disappear like morning vapor on a Maharashtrian plateau ...

my fortune seeing that.

one day she will forget me and the world and not come back

or when she does we will have a certainty of meeting once before.