“What kind of life is this?”
Pradesh offers his hands in supplication.
“We should warn them there's nothing here.
My family sold land for the journey.”

Here in a back street
eager to disclose his inner space
Pradesh drags clear a square of chipboard
distressed corners shedding altered wood.

He breast-strokes through a gap
kicked into crumbled brick,
swims in against a thankless tide,

Imagines he's safe here in this place
veiled with yellowing plastic,
the stench of decayed waste crawling  brittle walls.

“Others venture here too – in their thousands.”

“We are the Nameless Treaders of Earth.
We share the same contiguous roots,
the same seed, the same flowering.
We share the same goal – survival,
even the unscrupulous....
even you my friend.

Mindful of dissolving into prickly cynicism
he slumps onto his lath-thin mattress,
draws up his knees foetus-style....

and slips into half-sleep, submerged in dreams
of a home to which he can never return.



copyright © Caroline Grace 2012