A roaring event rips lives apart. Like a river that parts land into two banks. Sometimes brothers are rent apart by life, never to be joined again. Nations arise out of land that was once one.

Born of the same soil, yet separated by the rapid gusts of flowing water. At the culmination though, love breaks barriers. At the ocean, the roar of the river is drowned in the peace of the wave.

Sometimes, we must let go and let life mend itself.

When the river meets
the ocean, sands from two banks
mingle, become one

Sometime in everyone's life, withered
leaves will not grow back and one autumn
will not pass to spring. Sometimes we know.
Suffering. The constant visitor hidden
like a shadow silhouetting our life.
Every slow winding hour, we move closer
to when limbs falter and senses numb.
Endings ever lie hidden like a corner
sudden at the far end of a thrilling road.
Sometimes we are sure, we are more than
the frame of bones. Suffering is inferior,
deliverance is the greater truth. But:
we don't care, the thrill of weakness
is more attractive than the calm of Self.
One momentous journey, out of the
false-lit comfort of familiar darkness.
These that stalk us: disease, old age, death.
One man could see it all in one evening
what takes us many lives, may be.

Dark bower by the deepest night,
Not again, not again;
Songs of leaves that
whisper to the half-moon
hymn you: Señora,
Seeking you, clouds soar the skies;
You conceal all the stars
in your tresses.
Yet you look back stopping
by the horizon and I
do not see the pain lining your eyes
by dawn: whom
do the marigolds mourn, by
the valley of the drying stream
in late summer?
Who silent walks down the rainbow
whose tracks leave
pink mists on grass-tops?
Whom does the myna call to
in agony by the wet winds
of the early hour, and silent tears
of the early rose?
Señora, perdóname,
not again, not again,
this empty night,
chasm down the valley of days.

Distant clouds lining the endless horizon hurtling back in waves,
rugged trees on the blue-barren shore, courtyard of this palace-
prison: the world shrinks, receding softly like
the last light of the evening sun:
Neither Odysseus King of Ithaca, nor a captive prisoner of
my own deeds, now, the world drops from me, in this
deep night I really am no-man, now, I am merely
the awareness of nothingness.
New worlds emerge: where I ride flying elephants, a hero I am
who won without recourse to a decoy horse, where Achilles
lives and Laodamia grieves not, where I rejoice
at my home the year after we won:
Fair Queen, worlds as real as my prism-world at dawn, where
the sea-nymph reigns; Many pasts converge and onward
to many futures from this present-point, I am really
ever just the silent witness.

Far too many tides have you held him, Calypso, now let him go:
thus commands Athene daughter of Zeus, She who cannot stand his wails
any more. The fleet-footed Hermes delivers the writ of the heavens.

Does the wail of a mere mortal trouble the mighty Athene more than
the heart of her kin?  Will you Hermes not accept a bribe and tell Her you
never found me? That Calypso's home is too hard to find on sea?

The will of Zeus cannot be altered, bow or the bolt will make you kneel.
Twenty years has he suffered, let him go this prisoner of his deeds. Eternity  
awaits you: while his soul, death. Let him not regret his life in afterlife.

Thus did I leave on high-tide who steal to my own palace like a thief.
Twenty years play in my mind, but the strongest still is Telemachus's smile.
I leave her who cared so much to win my heart yet only the Zephyr -

Brought me cheer, that carried the smell of home and Penelope fair.
Here I leave the immortal who will die for me: for her who I know not if she
loves me yet. Who Athene brings don't fail me in life, even if they falter.

Somehow an internet cloud
has leaked into my room, and
I can soar the skies now:

Don't know
how long this connection holds?
chat on Gmail?
am online on Skype!

Memories return on
wet wings of the slow winds.
Old photos on this computer.

Should I
be content with photos tonight?
Separation is sweeter
on misty nights.

You said you were
reading my poems last night.
what poems did you read?

Another wave of hopefuls arrive:
a sea of humanity, on board this flight.
Wide-eyed young with dreams of a future;
Broken men from no-mans' lands,
seekers of refuge and an identity of hope;
The student of science, the Yoga teacher;
Precocious and bespectacled
immigrant kids with foreign accents;
Anxious old on the first plane of their lives
out to meet their children, or grand-children;
man in traditional attire; relieved missionary
from his conquest of souls; All escaping
to the Ark of the world, on board this flight,