there was no power

from my Mumbai hotel I
could see the stream of people
in the narrow street below

a cart carrying the dead listed
and nearly toppled over

the ox pulling it did not stop
dragging the askew carriage along

passersby steered clear of the primitive hearse
knowing it carried the curse, the fever felling the denizens
of this muggy megapolis

a plague harvesting souls
quicker than they could be burned

the Mithi was thick with their ashes,
diluted only by tears of the mourners
who harbored fears they would be next

I was there, a helpless healer;
a doctor turned detective, running
a race to find a cause, a miracle cure

all my potions impotent,
all my staring at slides a lesson
in limitations, ignorance--a discovery
of crawling creatures too miniscule
to be dissected, too beguiling to be
understood

my eyes were tired of looking
at the tiny death moguls and their victims
my ears weary of the entreaties for relief
from suffering

yet I stood and watched, one wagon
after another, carrying carrion for the pyres

I prayed the power would stay off,
for light would have shone on me:
a curious survivor, unworthy of whatever
grace kept me from the heaps of lifeless
limbs bound for the fires of the night

the third day of spring, pear blossoms fall like snowflakes
then disappear in the new grass

this blanket coming green after a russet winter
during which the old man took shovel to earth
to bury her last Retriever

the runt of the litter, yet it grew strong
and outlived her by only a fortnight, after sniffing her dormant beds, lying at the foot of her lawn chair

as if the canine divined where he last saw her:

lounging in the yard, reading Dickinson under early March light,
sipping a mint tea, scratching the pet's ears;

she passed there, under the same trees, winter's survivors
not yet in bloom

though full of budding promise, unrealized, unseen, but there even as they lay her in the ground

this polo shirt,

on a man who
never played polo, and only dreamt
of riding stallions on open prairies

will one day be on a rack at Goodwill
then on the back of a stranger, for the
price of a fast food meal

unless I decide before it's too late
to not allow it to become part of my paltry estate

and use it as a rag, to scrub scratches
from my German made ride

insults left there by anonymous walkers who came too close, or tread flung rocks
at freeway speed

this shirt, bequeathed to the belly of a bin, or sturdy enough to be worn again, will not be mine

to know its fate may be divine
or matter not one whit

the barks of men silenced
the hunt over,

the sun driven drip of water from pines,
a petty pelting on my shoulders

a grand distraction--this season of minutes, hours
when white becomes invisible

until its ghost dots my cloak, streams down my rifle barrel
and falls again onto blood drenched ground

this patter of sound, such a docile dirge
to the slaughtered

the daybreak tracks the doe made now gone:
victim of a rising sun, a warmth she will never again know

I found you

lone brick, of a million, one part of a mortared whole

your brothers now buried by time, without benediction  

progeny of clay, shale, you were born in a kiln as hot as all creation

dragged to this plain by spoked wheel and mule--sweat of the honest illiterate

long before the dusters blew the crops to hell, and Tom Joad's kin to the promised land

the mason who laid you in a proud straight row is now in the ground too

not a mile from you, where the county put him the hot Friday a man set foot on the moon

the bricklayer’s days with the trowel long past, his memories of you, your place in all weathers interred with him  

I found you , and you are the man’s legacy, he yours

on stone throne above me, in silent dominion
over his kingdom of cacti

this royal reptile knows I am here, prostrate--a simian cast
to the hard earth by a snake stung steed

this lizard saw the serpent strike, and my ten foot fall,
long as the length of sinful history

spine broken, all life's labors lost; no limb can move me
from this ground

the only sounds: my shallow begging of air and the mean symphony
of desert winds--their howling to be my dirge

the saurian monarch will be the lone child of God
to see my eyes close a final time  

perhaps this king will preside over my wake,
lapping at the feast of flies

they are snow laden, silent
save the gurgle of the brook

no leaf is left to stir in the breeze
though they make soft bed for my boots

I come upon the fawn, fetal curled,
felled by winter's white bone

where is the doe who left her here,
far from hunters' easy squeeze of the trigger

what perverse tilt of the earth brought
her forth out of season

and what reason was there for me
to stumble upon her--still, frost painted

hungry beast will find her,
fill its belly, bury a bone if that is its custom

her only dirge the fading sound
of my footfalls receding in the wood

though the trees will stand sentinel,
patient though not penitent, awaiting
the sprout of spring

summer song yet a dream