Free Verse
White
rhododendrons
We have reached
the top of a road
With Bhuti, my new wife's foster child.
The Himalayas rise in the distance:
Balanced massiveness on a dinner plate
Floating on hot jelly. Our walk up
1000 meters is in the foothills
And as we turn the corner at the top
A small stone house jumbled by the recent
earthquake scatters in our way.
A sad man and woman greet us and
We tell Bhuti to make sure to tell them
We are not from any aid agency – that
We are just on a walk through the mountains.
In the small courtyard beside their house
There are white rhododendrons like the ones
In our garden back home with flowers white
As new fallen snow. I tell Bhuti to
Mention this to them, and the woman
Cuts some of the flowers and gives
Them to my wife and says something
Which Bhuti later translates as: "Here
Take these to remind you of your home, and
of us and our beauty
in our frailty and despair.
Death watch
1
Hiresh and I
have been watching
the slow demise of a co-worker perhaps made worse
because our location is in the bowels of an office
building, our laptops resting on large tables,
in a sterile white room lit by 8
banks of fluorescent lights.
Wei leaves the room, running after his manager
asking in broken English
whether he needs to bring a notebook.
"No", comes the short response.
About 8 weeks ago Wei's wife had her 3rd child.
Last week, Wei's manager started asking questions
about escalating project issues, and why he wasn't
getting them done. Wei nervously kept scratching
the back of his head trying to explain.
It was like watching one of those PETA ads
showing animal abuse, or like a creature
frozen in the headlights.
Hiresh, ex-Indian Army with a thick moustache
looks at me, smiles, and interlocks
the index finger of his right hand
into the thumb of his left, points his left index
finger like the barrel of a gun
and makes a shooting motion, deliberate --
execution style.
